Drowning in Décor
Adriana Czernin
Adriana
Czernin, untitled, 2006, Deutsche Bank Collection
Courtesy
Galerie Martin Janda, Wien
Figures of
women drowning in the decorative patterns of the fin de siècle: Adriana
Czernin's hyperaesthetic drawings appear to cultivate the tradition of
Klimt and Schiele in the present day. Yet despite this, the young
Bulgarian artist is not the protagonist of a new retro ornament movement. Kito
Nedo met with Czernin, many of whose works are part of the Deutsche
Bank Collection, in Vienna.
Adriana
Czernin, untitled, 2003
Courtesy
Galerie Martin Janda, Wien
Anyone walking
from Vienna's Kärntner Strasse towards the Fourth District has to cross
Karlsplatz, on one side of which the unmistakable gold-leaf dome of the
Vienna Secession building
unexpectedly appears. To this day, Gustav
Klimt's historical Beethoven
Frieze from 1902 can be admired in lower level of the elaborate
building, which is known for its progressive contemporary exhibition
program. The mixture of heated eroticism, flowing forms, morbidity, and
insanity that arose during the heyday of Viennese
Modernism, when the old court capital city briefly counted among the
artistically and intellectually most influential cities of Europe, still
exerts a certain fascination. Even those of us who consider themselves
immune against the pathos and decorative gold-studded aesthetic of
Viennese Art Nouveau
become hopelessly immersed in the ruinous trappings of a bygone era.
Adriana
Czernin, untitled, 2004
Courtesy
Galerie Martin Janda, Wien
Further along,
near the brutal cement architecture of the Technical University, is the
apartment of the artist Adriana
Czernin. The area, the so-called Free House Quarter near the famous
Nasch Market, is characterized by huge buildings dating from the city's
early days, galleries, small shops, and breakfast cafés, where the young
and beautiful lounge around well into the afternoon, idly leafing through
fashion magazines and surreptitiously dreaming of more glamorous cities.
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Perhaps it's the foggy, damp January weather that makes the
streets seem less picturesque than usual; what they bring to mind today
are the battered cities with glorious pasts such as Budapest or Sofia.
Adriana
Czernin, untitled, 2005,
Courtesy Galerie Martin Janda, Wien
Czernin, born in 1969 in the Bulgarian capital and
a resident of Vienna since the early '90s, also doesn't quite match the
fantasy one might have concocted of her. Looking at the catalogue she sent
prior to our meeting, at the enigmatic scenes in which an expressionless
female figure seems perpetually engaged in a mute and hopeless struggle
against the greater powers of the ornamentation surrounding her, one might
imagine an artist every bit as quiet and pale, perhaps even cloaked in
flowing, floral-patterned garments, appearing at the door with an
eccentric gesture amid historical furniture from the Viennese workshops. A
cool heiress of the great Viennese artist triad of Klimt, Kokoschka,
and Schiele –
maybe even someone to argue with over the criminal character of the
ornament, as the architect Adolf Loos condemned nearly a century ago in
this very city in celebrated public lectures.
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Adriana Czernin, Lilien, 1999,
Deutsche
Bank Collection
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Nothing of the sort. Adriana Czernin is a petite young
woman with short-cropped hair and an aura of self-confidence. She's
wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and a plain blue sweater jacket. The room of the
spacious apartment in which our talk takes place is plain and sparsely
furnished: there's a table, a few pieces of designer furniture, and a
small chest of drawers. Among the street sounds entering the room through
a briefly opened window is the sound of a washing machine entering the
spin cycle. The walls are bare and lacking in pictures. The only
decorative element here is the timber cross on Czernin's T-shirt: entirely
direct and without any ornamental qualities.
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Adriana Czernin, untitled, 2006
Courtesy
Galerie Martin Janda, Wien
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