Renate Bertlmann: AMO ERGO SUM (I LOVE THEREFORE I AM)
Speaking of her own work, Renate Bertlmann said: "Pornographic jokes have always been a male domain, made at the exclusive expense of women. I consider my series of objects an accomplished example of an obscene female joke. This joke has hit home; it targets the deadly serious, male sexual arrogance. My works could be created only because I was obviously able, despite my anxieties, to discuss sexuality and sexual repression simultaneously through desire and ironic distance."
Despite its closeness to the nascent women’s art movement in the 1970s, revolting against a male-dominated world and developing new aesthetics to represent the female body, Bertlmann’s work distinguished itself by its inclusion of the masculine point of view. Working with collages, drawings, photographs, photo-films, performances and objects, her work has always played, not without humour, on the ambivalence of the feminine and masculine relationship in terms of sexuality and desire, challenging the stereotyped, preconceived roles assigned by society. Deepening society’s preconceptions, from 1975 she developed a series of works using latex teats and inflated condoms, associating the phallic with the feminine and addressing issues of contraception and motherhood. Including pornography in her work from the 1980s onwards, Bertlmann has pursued throughout her career an interrogation on gender relations. As one of the pioneering artists behind the Avant Garde and Feminist art movement, a retrospective of Bertlmann's extensive work is long overdue. The SAMMLUNG VERBUND will be presenting the first survey, compiling, together with the artist, the first comprehensive publication of her work in German and in English.
The artist Renate Bertlmann (b. 1943), who lives and works in Vienna, is a preeminent representative of the ‘feminist avant-garde. The artist’s designation for her work is AMO ERGO SUM (I LOVE THEREFORE I AM). She deftly arranges clashes between antagonistic pairs: sexual pleasure and asceticism, female and male, soft and hard, attraction and repulsion. Pacifier meets knife. Ambivalent feelings between tenderness and aggression come to the fore, fueling Bertlmann’s “subversive politics.” In an accompanying catalogue five international writers discuss Bertlmann’s trilogy of themes: “Pornography,” “Irony,” “Utopia.”
Berthold Ecker (Director, MUSA, Vienna) sketches the evolution of the motif of the bride; Jessica Morgan (Director, DIA Art Foundation, New York) interprets Renate Bertlmann’s work in light of Freudian psychoanalysis; an interview by Gabriele Schor (Director, SAMMLUNG VERBUND Collection, Vienna) addresses the affinities between performance art and staged photography; the writer, art historian, and art critic Abigail Solomon-Godeau (Paris) situates Bertlmann’s work in the history of feminism; and Katharina Sykora (Professor, Braunschweig University of Art HBK) explores the subject of skin and its capacity for separation as well as connection. A wide-ranging biografie, a filmography, and a chronological list of her performances round out the volume.
RENATE BERTLMANN, AMO ERGO SUM - A Subversive Political Progam runs until 30 June 2016 curated by Gabriele Schor
