Michael Gumhold
Untitled (Escape Artist)
2015
pencil, coloured pencil, water colour on paper
22 x 27 cm (54,8 x 40,4 cm including frame)
Untitled (giving head), 2012
Ram scull, Wood, Screws, Bassdrum-Pedale, springs, varnish
50 x 54 x 37 cm
Untitled (flat tambourine logarythm manual, snare drum, hi hat + bottle top, floor tom / bottle top, Mikrofonspinne), 2012
tripods, wood, canvas, springs, paint, parts of drum kit, cooking pot + lid, crown caps, mirror folie, wood, recordplayer, varnish, book, aluminium, recording studio tripod, screws, cucumber
size variable
Untitled (equipment, hands, instruments), 2011 - 2012
acryl on record cover
4 sets á 12 Stück, je 31 x 31 x 2 cm
Untitled (The Sculpture Group # 6 feat. W. Benjamin), 2009
Springs, acrylic varnish on wood, screws, typewriting letters on construction paper, acrylic glass
170 x 220 x 8,5 cm
Untitled (The Sculpture Group-expanded #3), 2009
acrylic and varnish on wood, springs
127 x 111 x 7 cm
Untitled (Come on motherfucker), 2002 - 2009
Oil, adhesive letters and acrylic varnish on canvas
120 x 100 x 5 cm
Untitled (Rotorelief), 2008
Two record players, wood, varnish, aluminium, various electronic devices, lemon
45 x 38 x 56 cm
The multilayered referential system of the artist Michael Gumhold (1978) does not hesitate to encompass all icons of music, art, or design history. With no sense of scruple, he reaches into the treasure chest of our memories and frees the archives in our minds. He dissects, dismantles, repeats and makes new linkages and lays out the track along which we follow him into his semiotic visual universe. Gumhold likes associational chains of quotations that do not remain mere references, but rather serve a starting points for aesthetic reformulations. The shift in significance—as from high to low, from original unique object to a recontextualized copy—here has a method, and is intentional. Gumhold’s rough material aesthetic and expressive gesture are directly borrowed from the event character of music, and a rather hard-rock style of music at that. In his Rehearsal : Room-Installationen apparatuses familiar from music, like instruments, microphones, or amplifiers, are taken from their functional context and find a new existence as sculptures in a sign system. The music itself might remain silent, but its revolutionary potential, its affective directness and performative force are transformed into the situation of the exhibition.
Gumhold’s works have been on view at WUK, Wien (2017), Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, (2016), Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna (2016), Futuregarden, Vienna (2016), Kunsthalle Graz (2015), Georg Kargl BOX, Vienna (2012), Austrian Cultural Forum, London (2009), Neue Galerie am Landesmuseum Johanneum, Graz (2007), Cultur Centrum Wolkenstein (2001).