++++ Florian Pumhösl has tamed the light and induced it to arrange itself in uniform rows. The Austrian artist, who was recently awarded the Cologne Exhibition for Art, has allowed the light to burn points of various sizes and intensity on the large, framed sheets of photographic paper, as if he had passed a torch over a grid of holes placed over the light-sensitive layer.
The result is a series of reduced forms, occasionally suggesting three-dimensionality, which are composed of illuminated points. They do not result in any recognizable form or image from which one sign or another could be easily read. They are refractory, seemingly scientific arrangements which, despite their graphic barrenness, radiate a still and poetic mood. Behind the last of the series there is a quotation, "You have recently anticipated developments in the exact natural sciences several times which had not yet been recognized, or developed them in parallel, although you were not yet aware of them or knew about them". On a monitor built into the wall you can see a black-and-white video of leaves and branches moving slowly.
Until it becomes clear that in reality the branches are animals, stick insects which look as if they were thin twigs. Seen in this way, they are very successful design objects from the workshop of nature, just like the two large stones lying on the floor in front of the monitor. This all looks very clean and tidy, staged intentionally precisely in this way and in no other.
Florian Pumhösl's contribution to Manifesta is a perplexing installation whose three elements work singly or also in combination as a sculptural installation. The artist, who was born in Vienna in 1971 and who has been editing the book series montage since 1997, has developed in an extremely clinical formal language and in which he describes states of affairs which come from the context of nature. He took part in the Yokahama triennial in 2001 and has had several solo exhibitions in Austria.
His work is concerned with more than just the aesthetic domestication of forms. A strange tension arises between naturalness and artificiality in which both positions dissolve and merge into a new, fascinating and somewhat eerie aesthetic language. hoh
Frankfurter Kunstverein, am Römerberg, Markt 44, until 25 August, daily (including Mondays) from 11 a.m. until 7 p.m..