The Neue Gallery shows in the empty shop window a video work by Linda Tegg. The Australian projects on two screens a horse in a manor. It is a successful irritation.
“What are the newest rumors with horses? Find out!” So promotes the Neue Gallery’s founders Sandino Scheidegger and Luca Mueller upcoming exhibition.
An abandoned horse trots out of the trailer in the middle of the city onto two empty store windows and it makes you wonder, what is there to see.
Since Saturday runs during the night on two screens a video work by the Melbourne born (1979) photo-video artist Linda Tegg. The protagonist is the dark brown horse, that one time without saddle on the wood floor and one time with the saddle on the red carpet stands in a classic manor style room. How did the noble animal get there?
At the crowded exhibition opening people drink gluh wine and discuss the provocative work. The artist Mark Blond comments “ That has big city flair. One should use empty places to show art.”
The viewer’s astonished expression as it looks at the unlikely situation of the astonishing horse in the video, which is just as astonished. It sniffs, looks around and relives itself for some minutes on the precious floor. The symbol of the horse is ambivalent and its place in art history is huge. The unsaddled horse looks unreal in the room. It is like a real life dream image that a psychologist that loudly claims stands for meaning and energy that publicly found an entrance.
OBJECT OF LUST
The saddles horse relates to another association. Through the saddle and reigns and proper placement and behavior it is less irritating at the first view. One must think on a Barock or classical rider position image. Yet that the artist consciously presents the horse without a man she breaks the images conventions and torpedoes the concept as the animal as power and masculine symbol in itself. Linda Tegg says, “The horse is the biggest interest as a subject in my work because of how the animal’s beauty affects the sympathy of humans.” That directed and trained horse stands symbolically for society, in which accomplishment, appearance and surface are central. The artist’s argument with the horse goes back to the stone ages. The cave men painted the horse because they believed in the magic of the image and hoped they could hunt down the precious creature. The horse is also a status symbol for modern free time. Horses are the objects of lust, perhaps for the dream of a newly rich society climber who wants to discover the joy of polo at his new English castle.