Auszeit

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»Robert Staudinger thematises the clear signs of the decline of the human era and nature’s subsequent reconquering of civic spaces.
A blessing for deserted, emptied-out spaces that recount their former life with an articulate silence. The traces of humanity are unhurriedly colonised by new organisms. Nature has time. Some day we will be history. With a precision free of all embellishment, Staudinger documents the
peaceful calm and threateningly morbid aesthetic of this transitional phase.«
ZS ART GALERIE,
Vienna 2012

» In non-places once filled with abundant life – in crumbling temples of consumerism, burned-out night-
clubs, deserted factory halls – Staudinger displays a merciless sense of urgency as he depicts these spaces that have now been emptied out and taken over by new organisms. In the process, real details (such as the tiles of a urinal stained black and yellow by a fire) are “ennobled”, monumentalised, under his hand. “The only thing that was still left of this appallingly devastated building was this WC. I was completely surprised as I stepped into the room, it was bathed in an unreal golden light and I tried to capture this moment with the camera”, said the artist regarding Golden Palace. What seems like a photographic homage to Duchamp’s ready-made Fountain of 1917 is additionally an attentive document of that mesmerising stillness which falls upon us in the face of apocalyptic situations of this kind. «
Maria Christine Holter Mag.a phil. art historian, curator