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Franz Graf, Elisabeth Grübl :
Qui Nous Avons Vu Le Jour Schoen

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Ended
Weikendorf, May 2009 – Sep 2009
Rathausplatz 1a, 2253 Weikendorf

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A key element of the Kunstraum Weikendorf project is its continuing state of change. Artists are invited to complete temporary installations inside the space for six months each.

A regular component of the works of Elisabeth Grübl is the different spatial impact caused by changes to an existing situation. In Weikendorf she installed a room that is also an object, for a tone that depicted the Kunstraum space in miniature and appeared to double the existing space: a pure tone of 8000 Hertz penetrates the closed glass wall. The tone, which does not occur naturally and is generated by a function generator, spreads, it is audible but can be felt even more clearly. Franz Graf adapts this in a mural. He installed contact microphones inside and outside the Kunstraum. Not tied to any one artistic medium, Franz Graf works with drawings, objects, installations, photographs and sound. Together Graf and Grübl use related media in their installation for Weikendorf. Noises consisting of several parts are condensed into sounds and transformed to allow feedback to occur. "Smoke and light make the space look like a film set without musicians, where broadcasting and receiving are apparently running out of control." (Franz Graf)
The focus of local interest is the usually locked space, which is always visible but void of people and in a nameless setting. This space is the subject of the work. In her exhibition concept she quotes a passage from Franz Kafka's Excursion into the Mountains: "'I don't know', I cried without a sound. 'I just don't know. If nobody comes, then nobody comes. …I would really like — and why not — make an excursion in the company of absolutely nobody. Into the mountains of course, where else?"* In a place where there is nobody, Graf's objects and drawings of close-ups of female bodies appear like "dreams of absence" (Franz Graf), apparatus, machines, suction grips on the glass wall, a foot that looks like it is sticking through the wall, a broken word in a showcase — ‘today’. The title Oui nous avons vu le jour schoen unites the work by Elisabeth Grübl with that of Franz Graf as a "visual waiting room with soundtracks, a noise on the other side" (Franz Graf).