Rainer Strzolka

The Graz Diaries Rainer Strzolka

Limited edition, worldwide 500 pieces. Graz is one of the cities with the highest quality of life among European cities. Pleasant climate, attractive architecture, an excellent cultural offer, a respected university, and people of a basic kindness, without any pampering. Graz is a city that keeps coming back. The first volume of the Graz diaries presented here testifies to the desire for it. Further works by Rainer Strzolka on Austria can also be found at https: //www.austria-projekt.atRainer StrzolkaRainer Strzolka (°1956, Berlin, Germany) makes photos, performances, installations and mixed media artworks. By taking daily life as subject matter while commenting on the everyday aesthetic of middle class values, Strzolka focuses on the idea of 'public space' and more specifically on spaces where anyone can do anything at any given moment: the non-private space, the non-privately owned space, space that is economically uninteresting. His photos directly respond to the surrounding environment and uses everyday experiences from the artist as a starting point. Often these are framed instances that would go unnoticed in their original context. With a conceptual approach, he makes work that generates diverse meanings. Associations and meanings collide. Space becomes time and language becomes image. His works are often about contact with architecture and basic living elements. Energy (heat, light, water), space and landscape are examined in less obvious ways and sometimes developed in absurd ways. In a search for new methods to 'read the city', he tries to approach a wide scale of subjects in a multi-layered way, likes to involve the viewer in a way that is sometimes physical and believes in the idea of function following form in a work. His works question the conditions of appearance of an image in the context of contemporary visual culture in which images, representations and ideas normally function. By studying sign processes, signification and communication, he often creates work using creative game tactics, but these are never permissive. Play is a serious matter: during the game, different rules apply than in everyday life and even everyday objects undergo transubstantiation. His works are characterised by the use of everyday objects in an atmosphere of middleclass mentality in which recognition plays an important role. Rainer Strzolka currently lives and works in Graz.