2023-06-11 08:20:04
“Four exhibitions within half a year – I’ve never had that before,” says Walter Schmogner. The 80th birthday of the versatile artist, who lives in Vienna and on a converted square farm in southern Burgenland, is being celebrated this Sunday with presentations in Vienna, Graz, Güssing and Salzburg.
The current exhibition in Vienna’s Chobot Gallery is called like an etching, of which 18 are being published: “The universe is shrinking and wants to get into my brain via the Milky Way”. Pictures and objects from 1999 to the present are shown. Schmoegner’s objects have it all, as we know not only since his impressive Albertina exhibition five years ago, which honored the painter, draftsman, book artist, children’s book illustrator, stage designer and photographer as a sculptor.
While he used to like to let nature work with him to create symbols of transience from leftover fruit and vegetables (in 1986 a rotting pear in the shape of Austria that Schmogner captured on a stamp caused a scandal), he now presents a new memento mori alongside filigree winged objects : his own urn – in the shape of a dog. Manufactured using 3D printing and polished to a high gloss, the shape, consisting of three black spheres, is reminiscent of an object by Jeff Koons. However, this one does not have Schmoegner’s biting sense of humour. The urn not only has wheels, but also the possibility to attach a leash. “That’s how I come to bars even when I’m dead,” laughs the artist and assures: “I have no problem with death.”
Born in Vienna on June 11, 1943, Walter Schmogner spent important childhood years in Spain with his brother Horst. “We were bombed out. When I was five, we were sent to Spain together with around 1,000 Viennese children. In Madrid, we were then chosen by foster parents. We came to a noble family in Toledo. We were very well off there. Instead of a It was four years later. When I came back, I hardly spoke any German.”
The son of the painter Theobald Schmogner actually seemed to have an artistic profession from his cradle. “He influenced me a lot. It was also his idea to send me to the graphic teaching and research institute. That was ideal for me. I started drawing relatively early and soon had my first exhibitions.” With his caricature-like style, he was soon able to earn his living with illustration commissions for newspapers and magazines, but also with commissions. Later, his strips “Co & Mix”, published in “Standard”, polarized with their subversive, subtle wit.
Schmogner celebrated his exhibition debut in 1963 with pen and ink drawings in the 33 steps gallery in Vienna. Two strands of motifs run through his work, which has been shown in many exhibitions since then: Oppressive, abstract rooms, steep stairs leading nowhere, gloomy architectural visions often kept in shades of gray that are reminiscent of Giovanni Battista Piranesi, as well as a colorful, self-created fauna with cocoons and insects, thread-thin flying creatures and lost-looking stick figures. Blurred, rotating movements and color explosions indicate that this universe is in constant motion.
But not only anarchy and poetry are constant components in Schmogner’s work. The political is always present. This should become particularly clear in the exhibition planned for July 1 in the Sommer Gallery: The images shown convey anger and despair regarding the political failure in the face of climate change and regarding the worldwide shift to the right. “I’m appalled at what’s happening in politics,” says the artist – and is showing pictures in Graz with descriptive titles such as “Dissolving Globe”, “The Shrill Dead Silence” or “Hyena Laughing Dead”.
Exhibitions in the Güssinger gallery ConClusius (from August 26th) and the Salzburg gallery Welz (from October 21st), an Ö1 “Menschenbilder” program (today at 2.05 p.m.) as well as a private party in Café Korb, at which Walter Schmogner alongside his friend Harri Stojka will also prove his musicality, round off the appreciation.
Does anything miss? Yes, a new book. After all, his catalog raisonné not only includes experimental films and stage sets – for example for the premiere of Wolfgang Bauer’s “Die Kantine – Capriccio a la Habsburg” in Graz in 1993, for “Schwejk” at the Volkstheater in Vienna (1995) or for “Der Theatermacher” in 2002 Ernst-Deutsch-Theater in Hamburg – but also more than 30 books.
Schmögner’s list of publications ranges from illustrations to texts by other authors such as “Der Bär auf dem Försterball” by Peter Hacks, to the “Drachenbuch” (1969 a children’s book bestseller, translated into twelve languages and awarded the German Youth Literature Prize, which is also available in China) to “Konrad Vogel’s New Animal Life” and “Night and Day Pictures of My Time”. A book is actually planned together with Friedrich C. Heller. It is intended to be Schmogner’s personal book of books, a book regarding all his books. Release date is still uncertain. Maybe for the next big birthday…
1686472204
#Versatile #artist #Walter #Schmogner