In over 30 years of exhibition activity the Austrian artist (born in Mauthen in 1958, lives in Vienna) has uniquely understood how to preserve his multi-faceted work and its significance from the rigidity of an ‘oeuvre’, and to remain mobile in contexts that have altered.
The pragmatism and indifference that superficially seem to be revealed in the works of Zobernig are thwarted by a playful interaction with the concept of media, which – studded with historical references and quotes – always raises more questions about the legacy of modernism and the present in a literal sense, than it offers answers. The heterogeneity of the media concept is the basic motif of his entire work and shifts the performative aspect of his oeuvre into the foreground. For Zobernig’s settings are not to be reduced to objects, pictures, films and installations, his interest in spatial relations is always connected with institutional critique, architectural reflection and the question of physical spaces for art.
