Florian Pumhösl “No One’s Voice”
Miguel Abreu Gallery (88 Eldridge St.)
This event has ended.
[…] this solemn Voice/ Which knows itself when it sounds/ to be no longer the voice of anyone/ As much as the voice of the waves and the forests.
Paul Valéry, “La Pythie”
Miguel Abreu Gallery presents No One’s Voice, Florian Pumhösl’s second solo exhibition at the gallery.
The exhibition consists of a group of ten plaster reliefs and nine stamp drawings, all made within the last year. The reliefs are painted with red casein paint in a tone which at once can evoke architectural (brick, terracotta), geographical (soil, red earth), and political (flag, revolution) contexts. Similar to the motifs of the drawings, which are arrangements of elementary linear fragments, the reliefs are configurations based on a 14 ⇠ x 20 7/8 inch module. Like the cliché stampings of the drawings, these objects can be described as proto-mechanical: they are made by pouring plaster into silicone molds; however, the initial forms are hand-constructed, and the final works hand-painted. This mode of production triggers the relationship between the positive and the negative space, as both visual elements are already part of a single cast object.
This new body of work furthers the artist’s involvement with cartography and territorialization, as manifested in After a Map of Eretz Israel…(2013–14), his previous exhibition at the gallery. The reliefs originate from stamp drawings of simple linear and rectangular progressions, which can be seen as representations of borders and volumes. In the shapes of the plaster reliefs, one territorial element relates to, touches, or overlaps with another, which might suggest a spatiotemporal event. This uncertainty of boundaries, which results from this quasi-areal exercise, is in turn arrested in the final objects: the intersections of positive and negative space establish grids, sections, elevations, and gaps. Of these new works, Pumhösl has said: “The reliefs did not offer a direct pictorial transposition of the drawings. They appear to me as irregular (in Doesburg’s sense: painting as an irregularity in architectural space), and—cautiously speaking—tonal.”
Pumhösl’s use of geometric abstraction insists on a kind of topology of modernism, which goes beyond the gestalt of the works, and in a sense, at once suspends and reactivates some of its achievements. By employing such visual vocabulary as the monochrome, the geometric regularity, the binary logic of positive/negative and vertical/horizontal, he is imagining a territorial play between the aesthetic and the sociopolitical.

Florian Pumhösl was born in Vienna in 1971, where he lives and works. He studied at the Höhere Grafische Bundeslehr und Versuchsanstalt Wien and the Hochschule für angewandte Kunst Wien. Solo exhibitions of his work were staged at Kunsthaus Bregenz (2o12); Mumok (Vienna, 2011); Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen (Düsseldorf, 2010); Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean (Luxembourg, 2009), Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam, 2008); Neue Kunsthalle St. Gallen (2005); Centre d’édition contemporaine (Geneva, 2004); Kölnischer Kunstverein (Cologne, 2003); Secession (Vienna, 2000); and Salzburger Kunstverein (1998), among others. His work was featured in Documenta 12 (Kassel, 2007), São Paulo Biennial (2006) and the 50th Venice Biennale (2003). In 2015, his work was included in Parasophia: Kyoto International Festival of Contemporary Culture in Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art (2015). In 2012, he exhibited his work in Parcours, a two-person show with Liz Deschenes at The Art Institute of Chicago. Recently, Pumhösl’s work appeared in group exhibitions at Punta della Dogana (Venice), The Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Haus Der Kunst (Munich), City Gallery Prague, Museum Abteiberg (Mönchengladbach), Generali Foundation (Vienna), MACBA (Barcelona), Raven Row (London), Künstlerhaus Vienna, and Museum of Modern Art (Warsaw). He has had solo exhibitions at Miguel Abreu Gallery, Galerie Buchholz, Cologne, and Lisson Gallery, London.
Several monographs are dedicated to Pumhösl’s work: Florian Pumhösl: Works in Exhibitions 1993-2012 (Bregenz: Kunsthaus Bregenz, 2012); Florian Pumhösl: 6 7 8 (Cologne: Buchhandlung Walther König, 2012); Florian Pumhösl, (London and Cologne: Lisson Gallery and Galerie Buchholz, 2008).
Florian Pumhösl: No One’s Voice, with an essay by Karel Císař, published by Rhombus Press, accompanies the exhibition. A special edition of 25, including a stamped drawing by the artist, will become available later this fall.
Media
Schedule
from September 11, 2016 to October 23, 2016