Michael Bauer
untitled, 2017
video installation
dimensions variable
 
link to video: https://vimeo.com/199200513 

Michael Bauer

  • about the artist

    Michael Bauer

     

    Geboren 1988 in Wien, lebt und arbeitet in Hamburg.

    mic_bau@gmx.at +43 664 150 36 29

    Ausstellungen:

    Kuration, Organisation u. Partizipant der Ausstellung “KRISTALLISATIONEN” im Elektrohaus Hamburg Vertreten in der VETO FILM Edition #2, Screening im Metropolis Kino
    8. Bremer Kunstfrühling
    La Trasera (Galerie der Universidad Complutense de Madrid): OPEN CALL - A Greenscreen Live Performance AFIP (Frankfurt): Collecting Identitys

    Gruppenausstellung in Das Werk (Wien): “Bliss”
    Organisation der Archivausstellung “Oral Fistory” an der Jahresausstellung der HFBK Hamburg Sofia Underground Performance Art Festival (Bulgarien): I, died with modern architecture Elektrohaus Hamburg: “2012”
    Gruppenausstellung in der Galerie der HFBK Hamburg

  • about the work

    Michael Bauer‘s work encompasses video, installation, sculpture and photography. Through his work he seeks to challenge standardized perceptions of display, the transmission of infor- mation and hierarchies of knowledge. His videos often intertwine documentary and fictional elements with recognizable imagery to allow the viewer to connect with their own experiences and insights.

    In Bauer‘s most recent installation, the viewer is first confronted with a construction that ap- pears to be a party tent used often for outdoor events like weddings or fundraisers. The tent encases a video projected on a screen running the width of the tent, with LED lights mounted on its supports. The LED lights are used to illuminate two large images facing the construction from the outside. The video is reminiscent of a sci-fi paradise landscape and features a sepa- ratist group of young white people are hiding from an airborne drone hunting them, as expe- rienced through a number of aerial surveillance videos. The video urges the viewer, through stereotypical political slogans and rhetoric, to join them while they simultaneously appear on the verge of annihilation.

    In each of the two large images we see a branded product embedded within a natural scene. In the image to the right is a memory card normally used to store video and image files on a digital camera, with the iconic “Made in China” printed across it. The second image is the rear of a Nis- san Pathfinder. Bauer uses these images, along with drawing and painting, as representative of the “subjective”, while including an “objective” UV printing technique and sealed both images with a transparent epoxy resin.

     

    Text by Michael Bauer