"AUTUMN LEAVES FIELDS"
Edgar Honetschläger, Gabriele Sturm,
Martin Walde, Midori Mitamura

Bambinart Gallery is pleased to announce a drawing show by Edgar Honetschläger, Gabriele Sturm, Martin Walde and Midori Mitamura.

At the end of 19th century the ‘Vienna Secession’ – considered the first white cube in art – was founded by Gustav Klimt, Koloman Moser, Josef Hoffmann and Josef Maria Olbrich. The ‘Wiener Moderne/Vienna modernism’ promoted by those artists - among others - wasn’t just nouveau and free, it remarkably effected the art practices in various cultures and its philosophies beyond the academic establishment up until our days.

2012 saw the celebration of the 150th anniversary of Gustav Klimt birth whose painting and drawing style was strongly influenced by Japanese concepts of aesthetics. Klimt and his Viennese contemporaries passed on an artistic legacy of urban culture that presents itself as an amalgam of different believes, nationalities, languages, critical thinking, political-, historical-, social-, and environmental issues. From a Viennese point of view developing various concepts reflected in drawing/art will not diminish but enhance a sensitive approach toward the world and our longing for Beauty. Vienna’s beautiful expressive style does not wear the conceptual approach on its sleeves, no, it comes about without no sweat to be felt – light and witty.

In 2006 Midori Mitamura did a well-received installation at the ‘Vienna Secession’ and now she brings EdgarHonetschläger, Martin Walde and Gabriele Sturm, three internationally acclaimed artists based in Vienna, to Tokyo. In the upcoming show ‘autumn leaves fields’ at Bambin Art gallery the participating artists are paying homage to some of the masters of modernism and their obsession with drawing.

Edgar Honetschläger

Edgar Honetschläger is an artist, screenwriter, film-director born in 1967 and raised in Austria.
1982 -1988 he studied economics and art history at the universities Linz, Vienna and Graz and a semester at the Art Institute in San Francisco.
He’s spent half of his life in the United States, Japan, Italy and Brazil.

Common denominators of his work are an in depth analyzes of individualism, the celebration of cultural differences and the belief that all things ‘mono’ casts a threat to life and the beauty of its diversity. Linear understanding of history is a misconception just as the Western invention of the central perspective and even more so it’s concept of Love. Honetschläger expresses these believes by means of drawings, paintings, films, performances, installations and photographs.

1994 he realized the public art project SCHUHWERK in collaboration with Shiraishi Contemporary Art and Sagacho exhibit space in Tokyo - an installation of the piece can still be seen at Yokohama’s portside ROI1, 1997 he participated in DOCUMENTA X, Kassel/Germany. 2005 he realized the performance project www.chickenssuit.com at the World Expo in Aichi-ken. 2008 he published the photo book TOKYO PLAIN. Honetschläger shot many feature length films in Japan, among them MILK, which premiered at the Berlinale and recently AUN, which is still cruising film festivals, exhibition halls and movie theaters around the globe.

This year he initiated the video platformwww.sound-of-sirens.net in collaboration with artists from Austria and Japan, which serves as an artistic tool for people who were effected by the disaster 3/11 in Japan. www.honetschlaeger.com

Gabriele Sturm

born in Lienz in 1968.
Gabriele Sturm studied Psychology and worked in different situations in the social field. Then she studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna (1995 – 2002) under Markus Prachensky and Heimo Zobernig. She lives and works in Vienna.
Gabriele Sturm researches issues she encounters personally in her daily life. These issues of her daily life open widening gaps between the familiar and the strange, the close and the far away, the micro and macro areas, the historical and the present.
To structure the information Gabriele Sturm gains, she draws maps. She also combines topic-related maps with the significant images of her research.
In the exhibition space she transforms „research“ into a cartography all over the space as an important communication tool with installation, collage, drawing, photography, painting and video.
Similar to Max Ernst´s method to use anti-modern picture languages like woodcuts and old illustrations from books, Gabriele Sturm quotes historical themes and combines them with her own present experiences in a simple and unpretentious collage technique with bright sense and sensibility and actual political presence.
She shows a series of her recent project "Paradise Birds". That is a project she has been working on since 2009.She traveled to Papua New Guinea to trace "The Journey of the Feathers“.
Gabriele Sturm calls those drawings De-Collage/ De-illustration.

Solo shows “Weatherstation 2009“ at ZKM Media –Lounge
“bolt holes of paradise” Galerie 5020,
“The Journey of the Feather” art in public space in Austria, Germany and Belgium.
“UN/FAIR TRADE” exhibition at Neue Galerie Graz – steirischer Herbst 2007
“Block”Apex Art in New York,
“art – archives” in Paris and Nantes,
and several times in Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienna

Martin Walde

Martin Walde was born in Innsbruck, Austrian province of Tyrol in 1957. He studied at the Academy of Fine Art, Vienna. He was awarded the Otto Mauer Prize in 1991. In 2012, he received the City of Vienna’s Prize for Fine Art . Walde has been working in different media and his works can be described as „transmedial".

Martin Walde directly involves exhibition visitors in his dynamic installations and thus make their behaviour part of his projects. He creates a new relationship between the sense organs and perception. Using works which were no longer tied in a fixed position in the exhibition room but suddenly became freely movable and multifunctional and could be deployed free of their original context, since the late 1980s the artist has continued on broadening the concept of sculpture by exploring new biotechnology materials and audience participation by means of the action options which these days are so decisive. Using these strategies, Martin Walde transforms his exhibitions from a simple presentation to a sort of development platform like an open laboratory where visitors, irrespective of their own personal interest – can become involved.

Martin Walde has described drawing as a phenomenon that develops inbetween the media and can therefore switch easily between different realities – documenting the „real“ and storyboarding „Fiction“.

Aperto 86” Venezia Biennale ; 1986 "Chambres d’Amis," a legendary exhibition held in a number of private rooms in Ghent, Belgium; 1991 Istanbul Biennial; 1997 DocumentaX; 1996 Secession Vienna; Tokyo opera city art gallery opening exhibition "releasing senses" of 1999; 2001 Fuchu city art museum, exhibition, workshop and a lecture; 2009 Museum of Modern Art, ZKM Karsruhe ; 2010 Museum MARTa Herford, Germany; 2011 Moscow Biennial of Contemporary Art;

Midori Mitamura

Mitamura was born in Aichi prefecture in 1964)
Mitamura has exhibited her works widely in various countries around the globe since 1993.
In 2006, she held a solo exhibition in Secession Vienna becoming the second Japanese artist to hold a solo exhibit there since Nobuyoshi Araki in 1997.
Midori Mitamura's installations structure space through the combination of various materials such as photos,images, music, language, old clothes and second hand goods. And then she pretend that it’s "a drama which people can venture into."
The objects displayed in the space exist like picture book illustrations and the people who view them can imagine a story for each item. Her artworks try to share with people awkward and endearing emotion and memory that are familiar and close to anyone and everyone's lives through the everyday details of life.
Recently Mitamura also places emphasis on communication art-project "Art & Breakfast" that is traveling all over the world. To create site-specific artwork inspired by a particular location out of something, she choose between various approaches in accordance with the location, such as communication art, improvised installations and performance art, and incorporating photos and videos of objects.

solo shows;
2012 Uqbar/ Berlin
2011 Monash University Museum of Art / Melbourne, Australia
2011 Bambinart Gallery / Tokyo
2009 Grita Insam Gallery / Vienna
2005 Traveling exhibition, three cities in Finland,
group shows;
2011 “Quiet Attentions” Contemporary Art Center, Art Tower MITO/ Ibaraki, Japan
2009 "Domani"National Art Center Tokyo / Japan
2006 "Busan Biennale" / South Korea
2003 "Location of the spirits" Ludwig museum / Budapest, Hungary , Moscow contemporary museum / Moscow