Sitename

Beate Sprenger

CARICATURE AND UTOPIA AS A PATH OF CREATIVE RE-CREATION
Vonbank's installative works on religion and migration

From 2005 on, Michael Vonbank increasingly takes up social themes in his artistic work. In spatial installations, videos, audio files, photographs, photo collages and a poster series, he devotes himself to questions of "migration" and "religion".
The spatial installation "Kreuz verspeisen" (Eating the cross) was created at the beginning of 2006. The Muhammad cartoons published by a Danish daily newspaper in the fall of 2005 and the cultural struggle between the Christian and Islamic cultures that was rekindled as a result were the impetus for Michael Vonbank to approach his own Christian-Catholic religion in a caricature-like confrontation. The installation consists of a room thoroughly painted with wall drawings, aphorisms and text, as well as sound collages and a video work. In the wall drawings, Vonbank takes apart existing beliefs and reassembles them. He spices up symbols of Catholicism with erotic connotations, thereby alienating them and charging them with new emotional meaning. In the image-text communication, statements such as "Keuz Verspeisung", "Ich steh aufs Kreuz" or "Vater und Klein Unser" unfold their cartoonish added value. Vonbank completely reinterprets the meaning oft he prayer "Our Father" and turns it into the opposite "…and no temptation is too strong for us to deliver us from evil"). In the video and in the sound collages fort he room installation "Kreuz verspeisen", Vonbank traces religious rituals and juxtaposes Catholic beliefs and aphorisms with his own beliefs. The cartoonish confrontation thus becomes a process of creative re-creation.

The spatial installation "Sweet Dreams" from 2005 deals with the religious and social conflict between Christian and Islamic culture and ist overcoming. The spatial installation consists of a windwowless room decorated through and through with wall drawings and wall texts, four human-sizes dolls and clay collages. The dense wall drawings depict biographical and surrela content and texts. The human-sized dolls - one pair each from the Western Christian and Eastern Mohammedan cultures - lie in the center oft he room, sleeping. The sound collages are spoken alternately by two women and two men´s voices, repeating the texts on the wall in monotonous endless dialogue. A hypnotic, magical athmosphere is created, suggestively captivating visitors and immersing them in the world of dreams.

In 2006 Michael Vonbank completely redesigned the installation "Sweet Dreams". The wall of the new room installation, open to the front, was painted all over with surreal drawings in texts with blue, red and black paint. In the center, human-sized dolls - one pair each from the Western Christian and Eastern Mohammedean cultures - lie sleeping. Overcoming the conflict oft he two cultures seems possible in dreams, on the level oft he uncounscious, but the solution of the social and religious conflict oft he two cultures remains utopia.

"Somewhere in Europe"ist he title of a group of works created by Michael Vonbank in 2007 and 2008. It consits of a series of photographs and photo collages and a six-part video series conceived as an installation, which premiered in March 2008 at the Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna. "Somewhere in Europe" is about migration in Europe. In the video series, everyday szenes from migration neighbourhoods and the spectrum of opinions of the majority population represented in the interviews, i.e. the contents oft he "voice oft he people", are nationally and reagionally interchangeable. Three oft he interviewees interviewed in the video series are real, two others are ficticious. Hidden behind masks, the two fictional interlocutors reveal moderate or direct xenophobia, as do parts oft he population. The masked speakers thus represent "the voice oft he people", which rarely speaks out loud. Since all interviews are conducted in English, but not always in linguistically correct English, the interviews were subtitled - in correct English. Through the subtitles, the invisible borders shift; the nationals interviewed are suddenly placed in a larger, global context and thus become strangers in their own country.

The photo series "Wir Wiener in Wien" (We Viennese in Vienna) from 2009 is conceived as a poster series. In the series, Vonbank portrays migrants living in Vienna in their professional environment, spanning the spectrum from vegetable and newspaper sellers to taxi drivers, hackney carriages and Schrammel musicians to orchestra musicians and footballers. In doing so, he not only focuses on their contribution to the economic success of our society, but also shows the wide range of their professional activities as well as their sometimes close ties to Viennese identity and tradition (as in the case of the Fiaker or the Schrammel musician, for example). The poster slogan "We Viennese in Vienna" forms the thematic bracket of the poster series, the visual bracket is the artist himself. Michael Vonbank lends his face to Viennese migrants on the posters and thus exemplarily embodies all Viennese with a migration background. In this way, he plays with national identity attributions that are fixed on outward appearances, breaks up their patterns and playfully leads them ad absurdum.

This text was published in the catalog "Michael Vonbank. Demon Theatre. Works 1986 - 2015. An Overview" Edited by Beate Sprenger with texts by Christian Ludwig Attersee, Daniela Gregori, Lucas Gehrmann, Anton Herzl, Margareta Sandhofer, Beate Sprenger, Florian Steininger, Michael Vonbank and Vitus Weh. Verlag fuer moderne Kunst, Wien 2022 ISBN: 978-3-9035-7269-9