Anlässlich der Erhebung zur Landeshauptstadt vor 40 Jahren nimmt der St. Pöltner Künstlerbund den Passauer Wolf zum Ausgangspunkt einer von Mark Rossell kuratierten Ausstellung im Kunst/Werk über das, was uns als Menschen ausmacht: der Drang zur Gemeinschaft – und die Sehnsucht, allein zu sein.
Der Künstlerbund-Kurator lädt mit neun Kolleg*innen zu einer Reise in die menschliche Natur
„White Star – Lone Wolf – eine künstlerische Reise zwischen Erinnerung und Vision“: So lautet der vollständige Titel der Ausstellung, die Mark Rossell für den Künstlerbund St. Pölten kuratiert hat. Ausgangspunkt war der Passauer Wolf – jenes rote Wappentier, das seit dem Jahr 823 mit St. Pölten verbunden ist und bis heute ihr Gesicht prägt. Zum 40-jährigen Jubiläum der Stadt als Landeshauptstadt Niederösterreichs schlug Rossell ihn als Thema vor. Was folgte, war eine künstlerische Kettenreaktion.
Den entscheidenden Impuls lieferte ein Ö1-Interview mit dem ungarischen Literaturnobelpreisträger László Krasznahorkai. Dieser bezeichnete die menschliche Seele als erschreckend ab- scheulich – und stellte ihr die Seele des Wolfes gegenüber: klar, schön, still. Für Rossell war das der Schlüssel: „Es geht um den Menschen, den Stadtmenschen und die Projektion bestimmter Eigenschaften des Wolfes, die uns im urbanen Leben hilfreich sind.“
Der Wolf in der Mythologie ist Einzelgänger und zugleich Rudeltier. Der Mensch ebenso. Und wie Tiere in der Wildnis sich am Himmel orientierten, orientierten auch wir uns – am Polarstern, dem titelgebenden „White Star“. Rossell denkt dabei an die Wolfsskulptur am Kardinal-Franz-König-Platz: aufgerichtet, den Blick in die Ferne gerichtet – „der einsame Wolf, senkrecht stehend, um weit zum Horizont hinauszuschauen.“
Der gebürtige Australier lebt seit über zwanzig Jahren in Niederösterreich. Biologe, Geologe und Künstler in einer Person, fand er im Künstlerbund St. Pölten seine künstlerische Heimat. Für „White Star – Lone Wolf“ lud er neun Kolleg*innen ein: Alois Junek, Judith Exel, Eva Bakalar, Maria Budweisser, Margareta Weichhart-Antony, Peter Kaiser, Hermine Karigl-Wagenhofer, Lia Quirina und Andrea Brunner-Fohrafellner. Ohne Vorgaben: Kein Werk musste einen Wolf zeigen, keines einen Stern. Was zählte, war der Dialog zwischen Dunkel und Licht, Einsamkeit und Gemeinschaft, Erinnerung und Vision.
Fragen: Bastian Brenner für den City-Flyer
Foto: Sonja Rossell, z.V.g.
CF: 1. Ich würde Sie bitten von ihrem Werdegang zu erzählen?
Mark Rossell: My grandfather was a coalminer from Yorkshire, Great Britain the whole extended family were very musical including concert singers and pianists But coming form the poorer side of the family my grandfather and took not apon himself despite his working class background to educate Himself It is worth remembering that the Poet Wordsworth was from Cumbria, northswest from Yorkshire, and his poems embody the sentimental and romantic but also direct connection to nature that all northerners in my experience have. I say this because this relationship, an almost mystical love to nature, was held by my father as a great, albeit „unfathomable“ ( and therefor not to be entered into but rather worshiped from a pragmatic distance) truth and something which has unconsciously influenced my art. Perhaps that is why i went the way of Earth sciences at first, before i found my way as a practicing artist.
So began after years fly fishing in the most pristine rivers of New Zealand my studies in Biology and geology and then abandoned for my first art school and an anthropomorphic surrealistic art.
This aspect to Nature, in particular Zoology is surprisingly constant in my work.
CF: Wie sind Sie dann zu dem Entschluss gekommen 2003 nach St.Pölten zu ziehen?
Mark Rossell: I came to St Pölten because i married an Austrian who i had met in a center for social and artistic development run by Anthroposophists in Wiesselburg.
CF: Lassen Sie sich von den Inhalten Ihrer bisherigen Studien in Ihrer Kunst inspirieren, und falls ja wie?
Mark Rossell: In my first art school i was at first influenced by Roberto Matta and Wolls, Picabia and Francis Bacon but that was really an almost adolescent love affair. my greatest love is for Joseph Beuys.
and i do not think my work to be directly influenced by him, but he stands for me as the perfect example of how an artist should be. and thus he always stands in the background, when i am working. one of my lecturers at the Otago school of art Andrew Drummond was a great advocate of Beuys but i was really too green to understand it at the time, and that has always been the case with me, that i come very late to a realisation; often decades later.
No, i am my own man, for better or worse!
CF: 4. Gibt es sonstige Themen welche Sie in ihre Kunst einfließen lassen?
Mark Rossell: there are temporary themes, such as the arrogance towards Nature espoused by scientists and industrialists. this can be seen in works such as „ In loving Memory“ 2009 but i am much more interested in what my Muse has to say!
CF: 5. Können Sie mir bitte kurz zusammenfassen worum es bei der anstehenden Ausstellung „White Star-Lone Wolf“ geht und welche Künstler*Innen mitwirken?
Mark Rossell: that is very difficult to answer! It is a bit like a novel from Laszlo Krasnahorkai or the film Solaris from Andre Tarkovsky. Initially i offered the Passau Wolf as a possible theme in conjunction with the 40 year anniversary to St Pölten as the county capital of lower Austria. As things evolved it became very complex ( and few really understood what ist was really about ) in a nutshell then: it is about the Mensch, the city Mensch and the projection of certain attributes of the wolf , bei it real or imagined that are helpful to us in the urban world and the constraints of city life. But here we are already outside something quick and crisp as explanation, because The wolf in Myth and in nature has a Soul that is quite Still and Clear and we, project a whole cosmic world around this wolf being in order to transform ourselves, in our search for guidance. Hense „ White Star“ the Lode Star. Every human is, ultimately alone, even though we have our herd instinct, and are indeed social beings, we have in our Mythology the“the Man alone“ or Lone Wolf. the Alpha male Wolf is intrinsically a Social creature . a family man. Looking at the Passau Wolf in karl König Platz he is the Lone wolf gazing into the distant raised vertically with o look far out to the horizon.
vertical and horizontal, The city has created a geometric form and space What is this „blick in der Ferne“ Especially interesting because the Wolf stands, raised on a pedestal at the start of the Government quarter with its blocky modern architecture ; two long rows of buildings. and the vertical of the Klangturm
the artists who will be taking part are:
KünstlerInnen: Alois Junek, Mark Rossell, Hermine Karigl-Wagenhofer, Eva Bakalar, Lisa Quierina, Andrea Brunner-Fohrafellner, Maria Budweisser, Peter Kaiser, Margareta Weichhart-Antony, Judith Exel.
CF: Bitte geben Sie einen Einblick, wie sich der Themen-Findungs-Prozess gestaltet hat.
Mark Rossell: so our wonderful Obfrau Eva Bakalar said: Ok you do it! and then the next day i heard a sendiung on radio Ö1, an interview with the nobel preisträger Laszlo krasnahorkai where he defined the human soul as frighteningly abhorrent, and compared that twith the wollf’s soul as clear beautiful and still. and so i began to read his works and discovered if i might be so bold, a kindred spirit. I have been at pains to tell the participants that their contribution need not have a wolf in it, indeed need not have a white star and indeed it should be a working together. but i would encourage the viewer to go around and around in the exhibition coming again and again to a love story with a wolf, (A wolfs portrait from Judith Exel), and back into more dystopian works, not trying to hard to interpret the meaning straight away but rather let the works work on you collectively because i have chosen them very carefully, in the hope that the darkness and the light have equal weight.
CF: Im Zuge dessen würde mich interessieren wie der Schaffungsprozess für die ausgestellte Kunst abgelaufen ist. Haben die Künstler*Innen gemeinsam daran gearbeitet?
Mark Rossell: over several years the Artist Alois Junek and myself have formed a very close friendship and artistic collaboration, and so even though there is in this exhibition a large scale city landscape from Alos and a large construction from me, they were intended to work together.
likewise is the collaboration between me and Lia Quirina a young artist where i am the junior partner and really just had the idea for a Archaeological-dig themed work with her wonderful salt dough works and papermache works in center stage freed from the earth and brought to light. Lia liked my suggestion and so we are able to present her works in a Tarkovskian manner!
in the first room although initially i was asking for collaboration between two artist this has not been possible and yet there has been a very strong and intensive exchange. and finally there is a collaboration between Maria Budweiser and Peter Kaiser: a performance of beauty inside a dystopian „cell“.
I am very much against the old style of „Salon“ exhibitions and have endeavoured to create a „Nachklang“ even though there are traditional works on paper framed with glass or paintings on canvas hung, much of the work exhibited has, in my mind, found dialogue with each other, and the ideas have developed to create a very interesting contribution to the Man / City / Wolf picture that we must/ might live with.
Die Ausstellung ist ab 19. Juni im Kunst/Werk St. Pölten zu sehen.
www.amrossell.com
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