Rubin&Chapelle presents works by Axel Koschier on Madison Avenue - October 22 - November 1.

Interview between Alaina Claire Feldman (Director/Curator, Mishkin Gallery, CUNY) and Axel Koschier:

Alaina Claire Feldman: The infrastructure and labor in producing your work is often made visible in the final art piece itself. For example, you show the cords that power your lamp sculptures, rubbings of architectural elements of the space where you are exhibiting are directly imprinted on your canvases, a bronze door handle is exhibited next to a photograph of the same handle splayed out over a grid. Can you talk a little more about your choice to expose the process of making the work within the work itself?


Axel Koschier: I think everything comes with a context already, while site-specific works of the 60 and 70 reflect directly on the space they are made and or presented in, I try to integrate a short part of the history of a work without making it the dominant focus of the work itself. The main idea behind my showing certain aspects of the process is about choice-making. I also want to add a certain clarity or transparency to it. I tend to work in a processual way, so I’m interested in chance and where it might lead. In regards to the cords powering the lights in the light sculpture you mentioned, I wanted to show as much of the framework behind the sculptures as possible. The door handle and its photographic print was another way of adding history to the piece. While the handle was cast to be the main door handle of an exhibition space in Vienna for a couple of years, the print was a contribution to a magazine centerfold about three years later. I liked the idea of using the process of printmaking to generate a small edition of a very subtle piece. 


ACF: You mention site-specific work from the 60s and 70s and how the physical contexts and location of your artmaking in subtly integrated in your practice. Can you talk more about that? How will that play out in this new installation in New York?

AK: If a work or a series is made to be part of a specific installation, I don’t initially think about them as autonomous artworks, however, by being exhibited they might eventually get charged or impregnated with that quality. For example, in the exhibition märzzimmeraprilzimmer at Gallery Wonnerth Dejaco, I enjoyed the shift in perception and shift in experiencing the work from previous installations. When thinking about the concept, I got carried away perceiving the more intuitive decision-making that became visible and vice versa. That created a kind of suspense between a conceptual and an organic part of the installation that I liked very much. That’s further reflected in my choice to use grids and random forms defined by the process. For this show in New York, I want to try to find a rhythm between the architecture of the space and work that comes from another context, mostly. 



ACF: The boundaries between handicraft and the readymade, between sculpture and architecture, and between display and fashion are often being upended in your work. Is there something that's particularly interesting to you about working with designers or working in the space of fashion? Can you talk about your previous installation at the other Rubin & Chapelle space on 27th street?

AK: My mother was an interior architect and designer, and I was aware of furniture and textile design from very early on. Craftsmanship and industrial design is always all around us, so I think it’s interesting to look for the point where perception changes. When does the idea of a vase turn into the idea of a drinking glass? I try to consider the boundaries between design fashion and fine art in general, and painting and sculpture in particular, so that I can move rather freely between different fields. At the Rubin & Chappell space on 27th street I made an installation in collaboration with Stefan Reitere, who I also run an exhibition space in Vienna with called New Jörg. The core of the installation was an artist-publication about a car that Stefan, Kerstin von Gabain and me owned in Los Angeles from 2015 to 2016. We really liked it, it was a Saturn sl2 from ‘92. Stefan and I used acetone transfers and the car’s original promotional brochure to produce remixed booklets. The publications were presented in very basic, seat pocket-like displays, held together by pushbuttons (an element I also use in some of my paintings). The sculptural form was a scaled interpretation of an architectonical feature of the Black Ball Projects exhibition space in Williamsburg, where we presented another version of the publication. By acetone transfer, we integrated some of the photos that were featured in it by copying them to shirts and pullovers that were loosely draped over the sculpture and changed its scale completely.

ACF: You mentioned some art historical and personal references, is there anything new that’s starting to inspire you these days?

AK: I wouldn’t want to limit my references only to art related content. I’m very attentive to the everyday and the trivial. There is a lot of inspiration that can be found in the detail of a cityscape for example, maybe I also actively try to look outside contemporary art production. I sometimes think about Walter Benjamin’s passagenwerk and the figure of the flaneur. In a more specific way, I have to say that I find the Viennese art-subculture to be quite inspiring. There are more than 50 spaces making exhibitions and events in a city of 2,000,000, and you can see something interesting almost every day.