09.05.2024 – 06.10.2024
With his actions, Günter Brus created iconic images that have entered the collective visual memory. With Zerreißprobe, Günter Brus ended his period of action in 1970 and overcame self-harm, but a body-orientated, auto-aggressive world of motifs found its way into his graphic work. At the end of 1969, he was commissioned by Kohlkunstverlag in Frankfurt to produce a documentation of his actions.
It is a final anarchic outburst against the various institutions of power such as the church, the state, the judiciary or the army, an angry reckoning with everything that restricts people’s freedom of development. Der Irrwisch represents the transition from the body to the textual body and, with the last chapter on Pfaueninsel (Peacock Island), foreshadows the later pictorial poems. In 1972, the expressive coloured pencil drawings of the edition Der Balkon Europas (The Balcony of Europe) were the first early form of “picture poetry”.
The exhibition curated by Roman Grabner focuses on the transition from action artist to picture-poet Günter Brus and shows not only the original manuscript of Irrwisch, but also the essential individual drawings and editions of these three years.
Günter Brus – Ein irrer Wisch
09.05.2024 – 06.10.2024
Neue Galerie Graz
Joanneumsviertel, Access Kalchberggasse
8010 Graz
www.museum-joanneum.at
