Friedl vom Gröller

A wink to the reaper that awaits us all, smile on the lips.

An elusive 16mm miniature from the legendary Friedl vom Gröller, Conditio Humana intersperses footage of the crumbling sandstone façade of Pavia’s Basilica di San Michele Maggiore with the returned stares of three performers.

Friedl vom Gröller´s Rust starts by gazing into the strained face of the saint. The artist herself reads "Holzschnitt", or woodcut, rather as "Höllenszene", a scene of Hell – perhaps because it appears as if animate nature is trying to force the giant to the ground. Gradually emerging from blurriness in the film, the hero defies fate – at least initially. In so doing, he sets the agenda for Gröller´s figures: Rust is about delaying the deterioration that comes with time. Three so-called "best agers" act according to the saying, "If you rest, you rust," training their muscles, stretching their fascia, staying on the move. (Anne Katrin Feßler)

The setting of the film was simple and straightforward: the now 77-year-old Friedl vom Gröller asks a (homosexual) escort to do a nude film session, has the man’s fine rib underpants pulled down by her younger accomplice, filmmaker Josephine Ahnelt – who, like a puppeteer, remains hidden behind a wooden wall – and exposes his member. (Dietmar Schwärzler)

In Maya Deren’s AT LAND, each vision of a foot hitting the ground took us into a new space via the magic of montage. DAS RAD works a similar transformation through the motif of a child’s handstanding wheel motion. Silent and in grainy black and white, the film takes us, simply but mysteriously, into a world of childhood. The ghosts of romanticism linger in the shots of misty hills. As in von Gröller’s ELITE (V’20), the gestures of everyday life become dance-like, and the camera itself gets involved in the dizzy, wheeling motion. Normal perceptions are literally overturned.

An ongoing portrait of Max Turnheim that begun in 2002 when he was 20 years old.

May 2012 is composed of three visual elements. In the momentary opening shot the camera spies on riverside joggers from the Donaumarina U-Bahn station. Inside a nearby care home, two elderly women are eating. One is the artist´s mother. She stares into the camera, from where a loving hand reaches out to caress her face. Finally, we see a Christmas pudding decorated and surrounded by candles, all afire. The scene is reminiscent of the flaming Christmas tree in Anger´s Fireworks but was in fact inspired by a viewing of Po zakonu (By the Law) by Kuleshov. The flames burn strongly and race out of control, causing the camera to become agitated, breaking free from its static point of observation, perhaps in panic. The film is characteristic of Friedl vom Gröller´s project to break down the separation between daily life and the making of art, being a particularly compelling example of her recent works that meditate on the process of ageing.

A young woman sits on a bench in a baroque park. The motion of the wind in the leaves, in her hair, and also the flutter of her eyelashes, the opening of her lips, her imperceptible smile are all made visible with the absolutely static camera. A large baroque birdcage symbolizes a hopeless emotional situation. (Friedl vom Gröller)