"Art is a loaded gun that shoots offwhen you pulI the trigger" says Elke Krystufek. During the last years the young Austrian artist has contributed a significant body of work about questions of the manifold constructions of identity. She is regarded as a pravocative performer, a self-interpreter who notoriously plays at the interface of art and life. Her work cannot be reduced to one term, it is multimedial, a constantly grawing material colIection of painting, drawing, photography, video and performance, at one time chaotic, and then rigidly construed. The diversity of means is opposed by a monopolized theme: the artistElke Krystufek, her own ego, her own body, her life. The mise-en-scenes were pravocative and sometimes shocking, but also witty and fulI ofhumor. With an impertinent nonchalance she has kept upsetting and has caused vehement discussions since her first appearance ten years ago. What makes her work so disturbing is the radical elimination of contrasts both in public and private. Krystufek deals with herself and in so doing surrenders to the public gaze. The viewer is forced into the rale of a voyeur and finds him/herself as an unassuming onlooker in the midst of Krystufek's fascinating peepshow. Here there are, in one and innumeraus self-portraits, stereotype repetitions of one and the sarne face with the melancholy eyes and the large oval mouth, surraunded by text fragments, aphorisms, unrelated curses and ramantic dreams. Then, there are pieces with Krystufek photographing herself in a mirrar, becoming her own model, in a photograph and later in a painted picture. Here we have an illustrated novel consisting of r,800 snapshots, pravocative notes between a diary and a soap opera, the associative storyboard of an artist's life, there are trashy videos and the ever-recurring carefulIy constructed photo colIages. Those draw their explosive power fram the informal juxtaposition of pornographicalIy charged body language and quotes taken fram a repertory of images taken fram everyday life, advertisement, and fram the usurpatory cooptation of artworks fram the related brathers in arms. Entirely in keeping with the concept of antropofagia, Elke Krystufek's work revolves araund identity and transformation, body and sexuality, and above alI araund cooptation and occupation. At the XXIV Bienal de São Paulo she will be presenting a new work dealing with the artist as an art colIector. The crucial idea is that Krystufek does not obtain artworks thraugh the usual appraach among artists, that of exchange ar loan, instead she buys them. Only the exchange of money for commodity brings her in the position of disposing entirely and unlimitedly over a work so as to integrate it in her own praduction. As opposed to the classical understanding of art and the "learning fram the arts," the artist's reflection, according to Krystufek, consists in active deliberate interventions, the actual material inclusion of "alien" art in the personal oeuvre in the awareness of being able to understand it better fram the method of nihilistic use. Elke Krystufek's mise-en-scenes always have a showdown character. This mainly has to do with her relentless way of viewing herself. Her oeuvre as synonymous for free radicaIs goes to extremes. She herself remains unflustered and relaxed. This is also referred to as sovereignty. Brigitte Huck Truth Verdade 1998 acrílica e tinta sobre tela [acrylic and dispersion paint on canvas] 170 x 130cm cortesia Georg Karg l, Viena.
Les miroirs d'Elke Os espelhos de Elke [Elke's mirrors] 1998 c-print dimensões variáveis
150 XXIV Bienal Representações Nacionai s