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Hans Schabus, Der Passagier, 2000
For his film Der Passagier, the camera is situated at the rear of a locomotive on the scale of a fairly large model. The rails of this railroad run along the circumference of the artist’s studio but at 2.7 meters above the floor. Here the experience of space is also an experience of time. It is as if viewers were passengers in the last car moving around the artist’s studio. They travel then with a heightened perception of material things, boxes, wooden flooring and shelves that have piled up atop one another. The positions and points of view are unexpected, the rhythm hypnotic. Nearby can be seen a table that incorporates a stereo system, a bar and a miniature train that follows the same circuit as the one above. Thus several different scales and impressions are contrasted. The passive view of the train passenger is balanced by the obvious functionality of the table. The giant video is on a scale equal to viewers’ while the tiny model is in this case a space for mental projections.
Born in Watschig, Autriche. Lives and works in Vienna.
Hans Schabus is represented by the Galerie Kerstin Engholm in Vienna, where he has shown this year. He has also mounted “I don´t look back, I look in front” in 2002 at the James Cohan Gallery, New York, and has contributed to a number of group shows, including “Uncommon Denominator: New Art from Vienna” at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, Manifesta 4, Frankfurt, and “on stage” at Hanover’s Kunstverein. He has two solo shows scheduled for 2003 at the Vienna Secession and the Kunstverein in Bonn. Mr. Schabus has also published several artist’s books, “Visitor 1999” (Paris: onestar press, 2000), “100 laufmeter” (1998), “Die Schachtel im Zimmer” (1997), as well as “Das Gesicht in der Wand. Eine Tür ist ein Tisch ist ein Bett,” Secession, Vienna (1996).
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