David Reumueller

David Reumüller – artist and musician – shows here a performative installation dealing with central questions about the forming of identity and star cults, using the fictive biography of a real-life fan and actor, Johnny Silver, aka Johannes Silberschneider. Taking a special identity – one that ultimately remains unresolved – he compresses even more its multi-layered composition. In physics, the term ‘superposition’ is used to describe the overlapping of sizes that physically are the same.

In the case of Johnny Silver, the various levels do not in fact appear to hinder one another, the basic condition of a ‘superposition’. We thereby not only discover something of the seemingly forgotten star; mechanisms that can be understood as a deconstruction of identity-forming in General also become visible, of course. Moreover, for Reumüller, speculation on what the Johnny Silver myth is all about seems to be a key aspect of his conception. Imaginary space is found here as the actual location of reality.

The studio of the Neue Galerie served from the 1990s to 2010 as a platform for young Austrian artists who were not yet fully established in the art business after graduation, finding themselves at the outset of their career.

From 2017 this essential mechanism for the promotion and documentation of young art will be reintroduced in the Joanneum Quarter.