Artwork of the month March

Rivane Neuenschwander, Bataille, 2017

Rivane Neuenschwander

1967 in Belo Horizonte, Brazil


Bataille (Battle or (George) Bataille), 2017


Wood, cork, felt and woven fabric labels
200 x 820 x 5 cm (frame)
Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Vaduz / purchased with funds from Stiftung Freunde des Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein

 

A dark wooden frame surrounds a large, empty felt panel – an invitation for visitors to fill this "canvas" with coloured labels from the three freestanding boxes. For Bataille, created for the Lyon Biennale in 2017, Rivane Neuenschwander collected words from banners and signs from various protests in which people advocate publicly for different causes, be it freedom, justice or the future. In this piece she transferred selected words in the same font, form and colour used by the activists for their design to the small format of fabric labels, as used to indicate clothing brands. In this context they form a reservoir that, divorced from the sphere of public demonstrations, can be seen as free play with words: anyone can reassemble the fabric labels to create new messages. Collaborating with many other visitors, over time this leads to a "collective painting" that manifests the dreams and wishes of a heterogeneous "social body".

In his theoretical writings, among other topics the writer and philosopher Georges Bataille (1897–1962) – referred to in the ambiguous title – negotiates the loss of the sacred and wastefulness in societies, as expressed in customs, for example. These ecstatic moments are capable of penetrating to a human depth unattainable by reason. Neuenschwander transports traditional customs and forms of "popular culture" into the present, thus initiating a transformation that is possessed of a ritual character and which serves to reinvent language. Neuenschwander trusts in the power of poetry, that is capable of touching what is profoundly human. The visitors can also pin the labels on their clothes so as to become bearers of poetical messages themselves.

Christiane Meyer-Stoll

 

"Poetry, in a broad sense, seems to be one possible path, so we can circumvent the predictable mechanisms of language. Poetry also contains such a sophistication of thought that there is no room for easy dichotomies."

Rivane Neuenschwander

Rivane Neuenschwander. knife does not cut fire, Christiane Meyer-Stoll (Ed.), exhibition cat. Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Vienna (Verlag für moderne Kunst) 2022, p. 45.

<b>Rivane Neuenschwander, Bataille, 2017</b>
Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein highlights a work from the permanent collection each month throughout the year. Works from the collection of the Hilti Art Foundation are also included in this series on a regular basis.