Mladen Bizumic - Planet Wittgenstein
At Sue Crockford Gallery - 19 July - 13 August 2005

"The undercurrent of all of my work is an exploration of individuals' relationships with their surrounding. These relationships are fictional and real, poetic and documentary, historical and contemporary - but always revealing themes of a changing society and the individual." Mladen BizumicMladen Bizumic - Planet Wittgenstein
At Sue Crockford Gallery - 19 July - 13 August 2005

"The undercurrent of all of my work is an exploration of individuals' relationships with their surrounding. These relationships are fictional and real, poetic and documentary, historical and contemporary - but always revealing themes of a changing society and the individual." Mladen BizumicPlanet Wittgenstein consists of a video work 'cafe Wittgenstein', an edition of large black & white photographs 'Cosmic Dispositifs' and a set of
water-colours 'liquid architect'. This time I'm presenting the unexpected but mesmerising side of the everyday life in Vienna, the legendary city in the centre of Europe with a complex past but focusing on its present aspect.

In my new works every element is given equal importance regardless of its value. The photograph shows a dog lying in the corridor of the 'Loos Haus';
the video depicts migrant crows flying above the 'Wittgenstein Haus', the soundtrack pipes the classical music mixed in the rhythm of drum-and-bass, and the architect's drawing tools are used as 'foundations' for a series of playful water-colours. The important thing is that these works are not about equations - saying 'a bird equals Wittgenstein'. They are not divided into two categories: those which are very meaningful and those which are not. The
idea is to point out that there is a complexity, meaning and richness in each thing in our surroundings.

The central work of the show is a video 'cafe Wittgenstein'. It depicts two different sites in Vienna. The first one is the park near the Danube populated by migrant crows on the night of their flight from Vienna to Russia. The second location is the famous Wittgenstein Haus, designed by Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the most important philosophers of the 20th
century, for his sister. Built in 1922, the house is notable for its simple and clear lines. It is considered as an architectural transformation of Wittgenstein's minimalist philosophy.

The video features a soundtrack which includes unrecognisable chunks of the classics - Bartok, and Elgar and Brahms (Wittgenstein's favorite composer)
mixed by the Canadian musician Venetian Snares. The soundtrack inaugurates a different temporal orientation, essentially employing the sensation of
dislocation. At stake in the video is the creation of a situation in which possible new interpretations can arise from the stream of memory and projection, triggered by the conversion of a specific type of architecture into a cinematic scenario. This video records the world of images while hovering at the edge of psychological effect. It contemplates shadowy
landscapes, trees, empty spaces and birds counter-balancing them with views of solitary houses and melancholy positions that serve as both starting
points and subjective observations.

'cafe Wittgenstein' is reflective (the blue of the sky, water and the feeling of disappearance as the sun setting down), painterly (the moon), structural (buildings and urban spaces), and full of details loaded with meaning. All the works in 'Planet Wittgenstein' proceed with a continual slippage, such as in my video installation 'event.horizon.black.hole' (recently shown at Dunedin Public Art Gallery and Govett-Brewster). These works reconcile light and shadow, precision and incertitude, stillness and dynamism, sound and silence, analytic acuity and blurry irresolution to reveal ambiguities, an in-betweenness, the indistinct spaces or forms of disorientation and imperceptibility. The legacy of modernism is offered as atmospheric images charged with memories, dreams and promises. My approach presupposes the accomplishments of post-modern and post-colonial critique - to propose ways of putting fragments of modernity up for possible
reinterpretation. These interpretations might be personal, romantic or, positively escapist. Yet at the same time the focus is on the aesthetics of modernity towards a historic re-evaluation of modernism in the light of its direct link with Vienna, the city where in 1908 architect Adolf Loos (in)famously stated: 'Ornament is a crime'.

Mladen Bizumic 2005

(1) The 'Philosophical Investigations' by Ludwig Wittgenstein was the book that deeply influenced the visual arts. During the 1960s it was the most popular book of the Conceptual Art movement.

Awards/Residencies 2004 Frances Hodgkins Fellowship 2003 New Zealand
Artist-in-Residence Govett-Brewster Art Gallery