LOIS & FRANZISKA WEINBERGER

In Fall 2008 the Lentos Art Museum Linz devotes a solo exhibition to Lois and Franziska Weinberger. Following the concept artist couple's participation in the project Mix it up. Collection New, in which the Lentos Collection rooms were redesigned by contemporary artists in Summer and Fall 2007, this exhibition will provide an overview of their oeuvre.

Lois and Franziska Weinberger deal with the intersection between the rural and the urban. They are precise observers and operate with nature at a very special, unconventional level. Their creative endeavors center around ruderal plants, negatively connoted in everyday language as weeds.
Lois and Franziska Weinberger contributed substantially to defining the debates about art and nature in the 1990s. They work - in collaboration since 1999 - on a poetic political network that directs attention to the marginal zones and questions hierarchies of different kinds. They see themselves as field workers.
Lois Weinberger began with ethno-poetic works in the 1970s, such as the "fragmentary inventory" of his birthplace Stams. These works form the basis for an artistic exploration of the space of nature and civilization that he has been developing for decades. In 1997 he took part in documenta X in Kassel with an internationally acclaimed contribution.

One of the terms that could describe their works is that of the processual gesamtkunstwerk. Starting from exact observations, they initiate processes using minimal interventions, which they then leave up to themselves. The course of the process is simply documented. The resultant photo material also supplies exhibits for their shows.
Motifs and symbols from the animal and plant world that they come across during their investigations are taken into Lois and Franziska Weinberger's repertoire and used for their works. The structure of a beetle tunnel, for instance, is found in an over-sized dimension on the roof of a building.

The broad spectrum of the work by this Austrian artist duo thus ranges from interventions in urban and rural space, objects and photo works, films and installations, all the way to building art. Where nature and culture touch is made transparent in the manifold works by Lois and Franziska Weinberger and will be shown in the Lentos exhibition.