SPEECH BY MR. CHRISTIAN EBNER, AUSTRIAN CULTURAL ATTACHÈ, ON BEHALF OF THE AUSTRIAN CULTURAL FORUM IN CROATIA

Excerpt of the keynote speech at the Vernissage of the exhibition on February 15, 2007 at 19:00
Venue: Zagreb City Hall, Zagreb, Svetih Cirila i Metoda 5, 10 000 Zagreb, Croatia

Broken Muses Zagreb Exhibition

Margit Brandl is a communicator. She works as a telecommunication regulator and expert for Siemens. Discovering the camera in 1999, the trained lawyer is equally familiar with a more subtle medium of communication- photography. Her profession has taken her around the globe and to many places and countries in this world. A few years later, Margit Brandl stumbled over an object in a Philadelphia window showcase, a mannequin, which was to become the subject for “Broken Muses”- the present exhibition.

Dr. Brandl’s work is characterized by classical realisms-she prefers to depict things and objects as they are-without manipulating them, neither before nor during or after the (analogue) picture has been taken. “Perfection” is boring she told me commenting on her work when she took me around the uptown Zagreb gallery. Artefacts, the main attraction of her work, and particularly those which have started to break apart are seen as an ideal metaphor to describe the biological process of human decay itself. Lights, bicycles and mannequins have been so far the artist’s most liked symbols for her artistic expression.

The fascination for me is not only Ms. Brandl’s “second talent” although its shows that professionalism does not rely on a formal training. It is the artist’s unique ability to spot here objects, to find, filter and “catch them” at the right moment which Henry Cartier Bresson would have called his decisive moment (“le moment décisif”). These objects are not staged, not treated, or otherwise prepared. They are as spontaneous as the artist finds them and only by being an object in Ms. Brandl’s photography they become a piece of art. In fact, through this act, it seems that these dead objects are receiving some kind of breath of life.

This is even more applicable to the “Muses” on display which reflect both their own and the artist’s sensitivity. Some of these photographs have been censured in other exhibitions. “They are only provocative if they are not explained,” the artist argues. I would add that even unexplained, it is only the individual observer who should make the judgement for himself/herself. Art, even if provocative must not be censured by any “civil” bureaucratic authority.

Margit Brandl’s work and messages will continue, we hope including in Croatia. Her next project, she releases, will involve “human beings at work”- in some cases perhaps a still-life? In any case, reason enough to thank, the communicator and the “muse” Margit Brandl.

Back to Zagreb exhibition.