Iris Häussler
Encyclopedia
Iris Häussler (ˈiːʁɪs ˈhɔʏslɐ; born April 6. 1962) is a conceptual-
and installation art artist of German origin. She lives in Toronto
, Ontario
, Canada
. Many of Iris Häussler's works are detailed, hyperrealistic installations that visitors can decode as narrative stories. Recurring topics in her work include social origins, such as family ties and relationships, and physical origins, such as biographies or emigration.
under Heribert Sturm with a focus on sculpture and has shown widely throughout Europe before her move to Toronto in 2001. Recognitions received include a scholarship of the German National Merit Foundation
, the Karl-Hofer Prize of the Berlin Academy of Fine Arts and a Kunstfonds Fellowship. Besides sculptural work and sketches, Häussler is currently best known for her immersive installations. With these installations, she creates "synthetic memories" by presenting the living situations of fictitious protagonists who have arranged their lives somewhere between obsession and art.
She has taught at the Munich Academy
and delivered academic lectures in Germany, Sweden, the USA and Canada.
, and performance. Philosopher Mark Kingwell
notes: "It is an example of what we might label haptic conceptual art: the art of ideas that functions by way of immersion, even ravishment."
In that sense, a common theme in her work is an invitation to participate in an exploration of the human condition.
archivio_01-shelf.jpg)
Students at a German academy of fine arts in the 1970s followed a loosely structured curriculum that emphasized studio work. There were few mandatory courses, rather an emphasis was placed on exploration and experiment, practice and critical discussion. Häussler's experiments were influenced by artistic positions of Wilhelm Lehmbruck
and Joseph Beuys
; she herself names Medardo Rosso
as her most important inspiration.
Sketches and drawings are part of many of her group- and solo shows. More recently, they were also integrated into site-specific installations.
. This discourse between artwork and viewer complements the positions of interactive art
(responding to the participant) as well as relational art
(focusing on inter-personal relationships).
propolis_01-entrance.jpg)
legacy_of_joseph_wagenbach_02-livingroom.jpg)
"Synthetic Memories" is a tag Häussler applies to her major installations; she sees "synthetic" as opposed to "analytic" in the artistic process of creating memory from ideas and action. These works are examples of "slow art". Often more than a year in the making, they derive much of their credibility from painstaking attention to site-specific
detail. They are also invariably off-site works
: especially her later installations have avoided to be labeled as "artwork" - or even to be associated with the artist's name - as the first step to open the viewer for an unconventional dialogue.
Similarities in form may be found in works of artists including Ilya Kabakov
, Christoph Büchel
, Mark Dion
and Mike Nelson
.
Conceptual art
Conceptual art is art in which the concept or idea involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many of the works, sometimes called installations, of the artist Sol LeWitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions...
and installation art artist of German origin. She lives in Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
, Ontario
Ontario
Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....
, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
. Many of Iris Häussler's works are detailed, hyperrealistic installations that visitors can decode as narrative stories. Recurring topics in her work include social origins, such as family ties and relationships, and physical origins, such as biographies or emigration.
Biography
Häussler studied at the Munich Academy of Fine ArtsAcademy of Fine Arts, Munich
The Academy of Fine Arts, Munich was founded 1808 by Maximilian I Joseph of Bavaria in Munich as the "Royal Academy of Fine Arts" and is one of the oldest and most significant art academies in Germany...
under Heribert Sturm with a focus on sculpture and has shown widely throughout Europe before her move to Toronto in 2001. Recognitions received include a scholarship of the German National Merit Foundation
Studienstiftung
The German National Academic Foundation is Germany's largest organisation sponsoring students of outstanding academic achievements.It is non-political and non-denominational....
, the Karl-Hofer Prize of the Berlin Academy of Fine Arts and a Kunstfonds Fellowship. Besides sculptural work and sketches, Häussler is currently best known for her immersive installations. With these installations, she creates "synthetic memories" by presenting the living situations of fictitious protagonists who have arranged their lives somewhere between obsession and art.
She has taught at the Munich Academy
Academy of Fine Arts, Munich
The Academy of Fine Arts, Munich was founded 1808 by Maximilian I Joseph of Bavaria in Munich as the "Royal Academy of Fine Arts" and is one of the oldest and most significant art academies in Germany...
and delivered academic lectures in Germany, Sweden, the USA and Canada.
Position
Häussler was trained as a sculptor, but her work is not easily classified by method or genre: she has had solo-shows of sketches and drawings, large and small sculptures as well as participatory, interactive pieces. However her most notable works are large, immersive installations, a synthesis of visual arts, media, installation, approaches in the tradition of social sculptureSocial sculpture
Social sculpture is a specific example of the extended concept of art, that was advocated by the conceptual artist and politician Joseph Beuys. Beuys created the term Social Sculpture to illustrate his idea of art's potential to transform society. As an artwork it includes human activity, that...
, and performance. Philosopher Mark Kingwell
Mark Kingwell
Mark Gerald Kingwell, M.Litt, M.Phil, PhD, D.F.A. is a Canadian professor of philosophy and associate chair at the University of Toronto's Department of Philosophy. Kingwell is a fellow of Trinity College...
notes: "It is an example of what we might label haptic conceptual art: the art of ideas that functions by way of immersion, even ravishment."
In that sense, a common theme in her work is an invitation to participate in an exploration of the human condition.
Early sculptural work and sketches
Wilhelm Lehmbruck
Wilhelm Lehmbruck was a German sculptor.- Biography :Born in Duisburg, he studied sculpture arts at the academy of arts in Düsseldorf and contributed to an exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris. From 1910–1914 he lived in Paris, where he met Modigliani, Brancusi, and Archipenko...
and Joseph Beuys
Joseph Beuys
Joseph Beuys was a German performance artist, sculptor, installation artist, graphic artist, art theorist and pedagogue of art.His extensive work is grounded in concepts of humanism, social philosophy and anthroposophy; it culminates in his "extended definition of art" and the idea of social...
; she herself names Medardo Rosso
Medardo Rosso
Medardo Rosso was an Italian sculptor. He is thought to have developed the Post Impressionism style in sculpture along with Auguste Rodin....
as her most important inspiration.
- Archivio (1991) was created within Milano's annual festival of the arts, Milano Poesia, curated by Gianni Sassi. Häussler had begun work with wax, exploiting its translucency by encasing objects or documents, an act of protection and removal. "Archivio" was an exhibition of process, a performance in which she collected daily newspaper clippings for the duration of the show, carefully cast them into thin slabs of wax on-site, and ordered them into a large steel shelf. Visitors browsed through the slabs, rearranging them, even breaking some; over the duration of the show the archive was transformed into a collection of disorder. Archivio was reinstalled only once, a year later in PraguePraguePrague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
, but the act of encasing objects in wax remained a theme in her work. Examples are stacks of wax-tablets that encase the laundry of children and adults, arranged into constellations of family relationships, or panels of gauze-curtains and dresses in which the fabrics' color and texture shimmers through the enclosing wax matrix; they appear as large, ethereal paintings.
Sketches and drawings are part of many of her group- and solo shows. More recently, they were also integrated into site-specific installations.
Gallery- and interactive projects
Häussler brings a subtle irony to many of her contributions in solo- and group shows. Even where she uses established presentation forms, she challenges conventions with objects, materials and circumstances that would not normally be considered "art". However, her goal is not to confront her audience but to engage it; her work invites to participate in an exploration of the human conditionExistentialism
Existentialism is a term applied to a school of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual...
. This discourse between artwork and viewer complements the positions of interactive art
Interactive art
Interactive art is a form of installation-based art that involves the spectator in a way that allows the art to achieve its purpose. Some installations achieve this by letting the observer or visitor "walk" in, on, and around them; Some others ask the artist to become part of the artwork.Works of...
(responding to the participant) as well as relational art
Relational Art
Relational art or relational aesthetics is a mode or tendency in fine art practice originally observed and highlighted by French art critic Nicolas Bourriaud...
(focusing on inter-personal relationships).
- Paidi (1994), a gallery show at the Kunstraum, Munich, Germany contained more than 200 passport-size images of infants, taken between 1905 and the present, juxtaposed with 280 samples of mother's milkBreast milkBreast milk, more specifically human milk, is the milk produced by the breasts of a human female for her infant offspring...
the artist had collected from nursing mothers. The installation explored "the emergence of particularity within the anonymous, almost industrial process of having children today".
- Huckepack (1995: Piggyback) was a hotel intervention in which Häussler installed the personal belongings of a traveling woman into a room of a downtown hotel in Leipzig,"Huckepack" - Hotel Leipziger Hof, Leipzig 51.345885°N 12.402952°W Germany. Guests were offered an upgrade into a larger room, if they agreed to share their space with a fictitious person. They were confronted with one of the beds being unmade, one of the towels having been used, an open suitcase with personal items on the dresser, all conspiring to create a virtual, yet tangible physical presence. Although the piece comes with a disclaimer - the guests realize that they are part of an artwork for a night - the intrusion is disorienting and sidesteps confrontation; in the words of curator Klaus Werner: "All attempts to unveil the mysterious stranger lead into autobiography."
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- Leihgaben (1995: On Loan) presented laundries, pillowcases and bedsheets Häussler collected from institutions - an orphanage, a hospital, a prison - to remove them for a short while from their cycles of use. "Acceptance and the appearance of a human dimension came [...] from an unexpected direction, when the bedridden inhabitant of a nursing home stated: I am proud to have my nightgown shown in an exhibition." - such engagement of participants through their unique biographies is characteristic of many of her works.
- Xenotope was a small series of projects that provided temporary overnight accommodation. The first Xenotop in LeipzigLeipzigLeipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...
furnished a spartan room with bed, desk, TV, towels and bottled water, all painted in a uniform light-grey. Visitors registered at a gallery and received the key for one night, to be spent without further direction or observation. "The only cost is to absorb the emptiness." Variations of this theme were shown in BonnBonnBonn is the 19th largest city in Germany. Located in the Cologne/Bonn Region, about 25 kilometres south of Cologne on the river Rhine in the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, it was the capital of West Germany from 1949 to 1990 and the official seat of government of united Germany from 1990 to 1999....
, MunichMunichMunich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
and FriedrichshafenFriedrichshafenThis article is about a German town. For the Danish town, see Frederikshavn, and for the Finnish town, see Fredrikshamn .Friedrichshafen is a university city on the northern side of Lake Constance in Southern Germany, near the borders with Switzerland and Austria.It is the district capital of the...
.
- Repla©e (1997) - a piece of Institutional CritiqueInstitutional CritiqueInstitutional Critique is an art term that describes the systematic inquiry into the workings of art institutions, for instance galleries and museums, and is most associated with the work of artists such as Michael Asher, Marcel Broodthaers, Daniel Buren, Andrea Fraser, Fred Wilson and Hans...
- was a response to an invitation to a "Blind Date" with another artist, by curators Susanne Gaensheimer and Maria Lind. Häussler sent a non-artist substitute in her place, who filled the large studio at the Royal Swedish Academy of ArtsRoyal Swedish Academy of ArtsThe Royal Swedish Academy of Arts or Kungl. Akademien för de fria konsterna, founded in 1773 by King Gustav III, is one of the Royal Academies in Sweden...
, StockholmStockholmStockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
, with chalkboard drawings. The project generated significant controversy, "...because it was made suddenly obvious how tightly the acceptance of an artistic work is still bound to the guaranteed authorship of an artistic personality."
- Honest Threads (2009) was a boutique installation in one of Toronto's most idiosyncratic venues: Honest Ed's Department StoreHonest Ed'sHonest Ed's is a landmark discount store located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is named for its proprietor, Ed Mirvish, who opened the store in 1948 and oversaw its operations for almost sixty years, until his death in 2007.-Location:...
, curated by Mona Filip of the Koffler Centre of the ArtsKoffler Centre of the ArtsThe Koffler Centre of the Arts is a broad-based cultural institution, established in 1977 by Murray and Marvelle Koffler, in the North York area of Toronto, on Bathurst Street within the Bathurst Jewish Community Centre.-Activities and Facilities:...
. A lush, theatrically furnished boutique held row upon row of framed photographs and very personal stories relating to some piece of garment, contributed by Torontonians. Visitors were able to borrow the garments and wear them for a few days, experiencing both literally and psychologically what it is like to "walk in someone else’s shoes". This piece loosely built on an earlier project (Transition coat, Übergangsmantel/Płaszcz Przechodni), 1999), collaboration between Frankfurt (Oder)Frankfurt (Oder)Frankfurt is a town in Brandenburg, Germany, located on the Oder River, on the German-Polish border directly opposite the town of Słubice which was a part of Frankfurt until 1945. At the end of the 1980s it reached a population peak with more than 87,000 inhabitants...
, Germany, and Słubice, Poland, two cities on opposing banks of the OderOderThe Oder is a river in Central Europe. It rises in the Czech Republic and flows through western Poland, later forming of the border between Poland and Germany, part of the Oder-Neisse line...
river. But while "Honest Threads" was proclaimed to be "one of the hottest art exhibits in town", the earlier piece had had "no audience".
Major off-site installations
Site-specific art
Site-specific art is artwork created to exist in a certain place. Typically, the artist takes the location into account while planning and creating the artwork...
detail. They are also invariably off-site works
Off-site art exhibit
Art exhibits are considered off-site if they are presented outside the traditional venues of museums, art galleries or other cultural institutions. This does not necessarily mean the work is uncurated, or created outside of an institutional collaboration. Artwork may be shown off-site simply...
: especially her later installations have avoided to be labeled as "artwork" - or even to be associated with the artist's name - as the first step to open the viewer for an unconventional dialogue.
Similarities in form may be found in works of artists including Ilya Kabakov
Ilya Kabakov
Ilya Kabakov, Russian Илья́ Ио́сифович Кабако́в , is a Russian-American conceptual artist of Jewish descent, born in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine. He worked for thirty years in Moscow, from the 1950s until the late 1980s. He now lives and works on Long Island...
, Christoph Büchel
Christoph Büchel
Christoph Büchel is a Swiss artist.-Biography:Christoph Büchel was born in Basel, Switzerland, in 1966. Büchel creates hyper-realistic environments that are, in essence, like walking into a mind at work...
, Mark Dion
Mark Dion
Mark Dion is an American fine artist best known for his use of scientific presentations in his installations. Dion has exhibited his art works internationally including at the Tate Gallery, Museum of Modern Art, and the PBS series art:21...
and Mike Nelson
Mike Nelson (artist)
Michael "Mike" Nelson is a contemporary British installation artist. He represented Britain at the Venice Biennale in 2011. Nelson has twice been nominated for the Turner Prize: first in 2001 , and again in 2007 .-Working practice:Nelson's installations typically exist only for the time period...
.
- Her earliest apartment installation, ou topos - Wien (1989), recreated the situation of an aged man in a large, turn-of-the-century social housing project"ou Topos" - Vienna 48.205565°N 16.333478°W in ViennaViennaVienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
, Austria. Focus of the installation was the bedroom that had been filled with thousands of tin cans of food and preserves, stacked in crude, wooden shelves, each wrapped in thick lead-foil and labeled with their date of expiry. Visitor's obtained a key at a downtown gallery and explored the space on their own and unsupervised. "[The work] sensitizes for the circumstances of others, without trespassing on their intimacy or dignity. In order to create an authentic representation, [Häussler] has lived in this apartment for half a year. She immersed herself deeply into this unfamiliar space, absorbed the odors of the house, listened to its sounds and adapted her routines to those of the other inhabitants. When the apartment was opened to visitors, fiction and reality appeared superimposed".
- ProPolis (1993) was Häussler's first hotel intervention, staged in a three-star Hotel near the Dome in Milano,"ProPolis" - Hotel Gritti ***, Milano 45.464062°N 9.18824°W Italy. The walls, floor, window and all amenities of a guest room were covered with a thick layer of wax; the installation could be decoded as the activities of a stranded guest, a salesman in industrial materials perhaps, the room abandoned under obscure circumstances. Visitors obtained the key at the reception for an unsupervised experience of the space. With this work Häussler "reverses the canon of sculpture, in the spirit of the revolutionary sculptor Medardo RossoMedardo RossoMedardo Rosso was an Italian sculptor. He is thought to have developed the Post Impressionism style in sculpture along with Auguste Rodin....
, [...as she ...] raises the question of overcoming its intrinsic limitations".
- Monopati (2000), featured two apartments in two separate cities - MunichMunichMunich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
and BerlinBerlinBerlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, Germany. These were transformed into different narratives, but remained connected through a single picture of a school class, taken in the 1930s that could be seen in both cities. Visitors were able to obtain the key to the apartments at nearby galleries and proceed on their own into the installation.
- The Legacy of Joseph Wagenbach (2006) was Iris Häussler's first major work in North America and her largest and most complex installation at that time. Curated by Rhonda CorveseRhonda CorveseRhonda Corvese is a Toronto-based international independent curator. Her curatorial projects often evolve in response to situations in which she strives to challenge the role of the curator, the artist and the audience in the presentation of contemporary art...
and widely reviewed and acclaimed nationally and internationally, this multilayered installation in an entire house in downtown Toronto"The Legacy of Joseph Wagenbach" - Toronto 43.647602°N 79.409708°W recounts the life of an aged, reclusive artist, through the mediation of an on-site archivist (often Häussler herself). Initially, the project was not publicized as an artwork but presented as an assessment by the fictitious "Municipal Archives". Häussler intended to facilitate an unfiltered and unhindered experience of discovery. The subsequent disclosure sparked controversy on the ethics of engaging uninformed visitors in an often emotional encounter with a fictional narrative that is initially presented as fact. Canada's National PostNational PostThe National Post is a Canadian English-language national newspaper based in Don Mills, a district of Toronto. The paper is owned by Postmedia Network Inc. and is published Mondays through Saturdays...
ran the frontpage headline "Reclusive downtown artist a hoax" which prompted Mark KingwellMark KingwellMark Gerald Kingwell, M.Litt, M.Phil, PhD, D.F.A. is a Canadian professor of philosophy and associate chair at the University of Toronto's Department of Philosophy. Kingwell is a fellow of Trinity College...
to deconstruct this "miniature narrative of outrage" and to clarify that the transformation from fact to fiction in the visitor's experience was indeed central to the work. Novelist Martha BaillieMartha BaillieMartha Baillie is a Canadian poet and novelist.Baillie was born in Toronto, Ontario and educated at the prestigious Toronto French School. She studied history, French and Russian at the University of Edinburgh, and completed her studies at the Sorbonne, Paris and the University of Toronto. It was...
visited the assessment, trusting in the veracity of the presentation. She published an essay on her experience, noting that: "She'd had no right to lie to me", feeling anger and loss, yet finally conceding: "The Joseph Wagenbach I’d created in my mind, [...] nobody could take from me, not even Iris Häussler. He was mine".
- He Named Her Amber (ongoing since 2008) is an installation in The GrangeThe Grange (Toronto)The Grange is a historic Georgian manor in downtown Toronto, Canada and was the first home of the Art Museum of Toronto. Today, it is part of the Art Gallery of Ontario. The structure was built in 1817, making it the 12th oldest surviving building in Toronto and the oldest remaining brick house...
, TorontoTorontoToronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
,"He Named Her Amber" - The Grange, Toronto 43.653146°N 79.392425°W curated by David MoosDavid MoosDavid Moos is the Curator of Contemporary Art at AGO Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto.Moos went to Jesse Ketchum Public School in Yorkville, Toronto and then went on to Jarvis Collegiate, he received a doctorate in art history from Columbia University and is a contributing editor to Art Papers...
and hosted by the Art Gallery of OntarioArt Gallery of OntarioUnder the direction of its CEO Matthew Teitelbaum, the AGO embarked on a $254 million redevelopment plan by architect Frank Gehry in 2004, called Transformation AGO. The new addition would require demolition of the 1992 Post-Modernist wing by Barton Myers and Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg...
, which provides guided tours through the extensive site. In November, 2011, the Art Gallery of Ontario will publish a book documenting the project.
External links
- Iris Häussler's Web site with comprehensive descriptions of her works
- The Legacy of Joseph Wagenbach project site with extensive documentation, including a virtual tour
See also
- Conceptual artConceptual artConceptual art is art in which the concept or idea involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many of the works, sometimes called installations, of the artist Sol LeWitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions...
- Installation artInstallation artInstallation art describes an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior interventions are often called Land art; however, the boundaries between...
- SuperfictionSuperfictionA Superfiction is a visual or conceptual artwork which uses fiction and appropriation to mirror organizations, business structures, and/or the lives of invented individuals . The term was coined by Glasgow-born artist Peter Hill in 1989...