Valie Export
Thursday, 25 October 2012
Work from her oeuvre.
“The black-and-white images here are far more quiet. In them the artist uses her body as a kind of measuring or pointing device, leaving us to decide exactly what she is pointing at. She crouches in corners, presses against walls and lies along the ledges of an imposing 19th-century building in Vienna. She lies in the gutter of a curving traffic median. She mimics the contours of sand dunes. Sometimes she draws on the images, as if to make comparisons between the geometry of her pose and the geometry of the architectural space she occupies.
But the work’s undercurrent is more visceral and humorous, and at times a little abject. Ms. Export seems to be haunting Vienna, inserting herself into places that are overpowering and by definition male. In the end her protest strikes the viewer as anything but passive.” -Roberta Smith, New York Times