Linda Bilda: Die goldene Welt / Rochelle Feinstein: The Today Show

Linda Bilda: Die goldene Welt
Linda Bilda (b. 1963 in Vienna as Linda Czapka, d. 2019 in Vienna) was an artist, publisher, entrepreneur, exhibition organizer, performer, comic artist, activist, and teacher. Her artistic and political practice was embedded in numerous self-organized contexts in Vienna.

Influenced by the practice of the Situationist International, Bilda developed her artistic approach as a way of intervening in and undermining an art market based on commodification. Her aspiration to emancipate image production was preceded by a detailed examination of the structures that produce our reality and thus our world of imagery and ideas. The comic Die goldene Welt (The Golden World), presented in the exhibition at Kunsthaus Glarus, seeks to unravel how economic structures produce reality, where they become actual reality, and where fractures in this reality are found. 

As editor of her comic project No Polit Comics or No_Politcomix (1994–2005) and of other projects, often organized collectively, such as the magazine Artfan (1991–96), and Die weisse Blatt (1999–2005), she always worked from the current situation outward, criticized sexist and fascist policies and their origins in the capitalist social order, and propagated a new form of coexistence.

Her sculptures and objects made from colored Plexiglas and LightGlass, a material developed by Bilda herself, a selection of which are on view at Kunsthaus Glarus, imagine scenes from a post-capitalist everyday (art) life. Linda Bilda never shied away from confronting the contradictions of an artistic-political practice. The aesthetic-political freedom that Bilda helped create through her work across media and cultural fields is all the more relevant today.

In collaboration with Linda Bilda estate and basis wien—Documentation Centre for Contemporary Art, Vienna.

Rochelle Feinstein: The Today Show
Rochelle Feinstein (b. 1947 in Bronx, New York) is engaged in the exploration of painting—particularly abstract painting. In paintings, prints, videos, sculptures, and installations produced since the 1980s, she has sought ways of expressing issues related to contemporary social conditions as well as painting. The works presented in the exhibition The Today Show examine in a variety of ways how the real world appears in painting: The Today Show is also the name of an American infotainment morning program on NBC where celebrities are presented alongside news in an ostensibly enjoyable but ultimately superficial format. The Today Show, however, does not attempt to sum up what is happening. Rather, Feinstein’s exhibition unites two different experiences: everyday experience, which can be shared, and the experience of abstract painting.

In her painting practice, Rochelle Feinstein works with existing everyday references and existing forms of abstract painting. Idealized as an expression of a democratic, free world, abstract painting has played a prominent role in American art history since the 1950s. Feinstein consciously seeks to engage with this painterly tradition by questioning its gestures. In Feinstein’s view, painterly gestures must first be invested with meaning—they have by themselves no inherent values, attitudes, or meanings.

Repeatedly appearing in the paintings and installations on view in The Today Show are the seven colors red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. Feinstein has mainly worked with these colors since 2016. They show up on the screen-printed paintings and suspended canvases, they cover laminated surfaces, they recur on mobiles made of Polaroids. The visual convention behind this color combination conveys hope, diversity, freedom. Feinstein makes their everyday use visible and questions the thematic references and affinities of the rainbow.

Feinstein’s painting practice is therefore a work in the vocabulary of painting—not simply with it. Highlighting this important distinction allows her painting to be described as non-hierarchical objects. Even though her project assumes innumerable forms, incorporates political commentary, and addresses the ever-shifting guises of everyday culture today, painting remains the focus.

The exhibition is organized in cooperation with the Secession, Vienna and the Ludwig Forum, Aachen.

Curated by Melanie Ohnemus.