For five years the duo Zweinopf managed the agendas for the visual arts in the Graz Forum Stadtpark and set the tone with great exhibitions. Eva and Gerhard Pichler are now saying goodbye to the program forum with the show “One Monument in Time”, which questions the monuments of the city park.
Artist Sasha Kurmaz has secretly, quietly and quietly sneaked into the park and swapped the heads of two stately busts showing important figures of Styrian cultural history. He watched the passers-by for a month – nobody noticed the exchange of identity. What was the significance of the monuments from back then? Kurmaz’s work is one of thirteen artistic positions that Zweinpot collected for “One Monument in Time”, which was done in cooperation with the Institute for Art in Public Space can be seen in the forum. You are all concerned with the question of what significance the statues and monuments from the most varied of times, with which the Graz city park is packed, still have in the present? And what new, contemporary monuments could look like. Several works deal with historically burdened figures that are still present in public space. With a very subtle intervention, for example, Luiza Margan and Eduard Freudmann have changed the Jahn monument and thus address the ideological entanglements of the gymnastics father. Anita Fuchs, on the other hand, uses vermin against a branch of the core linden tree. And Marlene Haring questions the motivations behind the Liberation Monument in a poster campaign. Artistic ideas for new monuments Others, in turn, present ideas for monuments that speak better to our present day. In her video work, Marlene Hausegger, for example, makes the unreasonable demands of building up urban space visible, and Ryts Monet gilds the interference of skater culture in public space. Rainer Nöbauer-Kammerer presents plans for a fast-paced monument to the Graz car tuning scene, and Josef Pillhofer’s bronze “Reclining Man” from 1964 not only bridges the gap between the beginnings of the forum, but also from the exhibition space to the park: it is a reminder Both to Sandler, who has their center of life in the Stadtpark, and to students who enjoy a sunny summer day there. And last but not least, Werner Reiterer turns the Forum Stadtpark itself into a monument with his use of the facade – albeit with a twinkle in his eye. He is tying a wonderful ribbon around the gift that this exhibition and the five years of curatorial activity of zweinopf in the forum represent.
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