With the exhibition title "réclamer", Valentin Ruhry (born 1982 in Graz, lives in Vienna) is roughly referencing advertising or the promotional function actually connoted by light boxes (Latin: reclamare; French: réclamer, to claim, to appeal, to call back). This loss of function is represented by the light-box frames assembled throughout the exhibition, “both through their components and in and of themselves”. Due to their unusual permeability, the objects increasingly thematise the space immediately surrounding them. The light boxes delimit light on walls and ambient light, fostering interactive progressions of light and shadow that are reminiscent of compositions of colour-field painting, of all things. Taking centre stage here seems to be this highlighting of transitions in the dispersal of light in space and the highlighting of gaps on the sculptural object, and, in general, also the reciprocal relationship between aspects of colour and form—in lieu of an analytical update of light art in a broader sense. In calling attention to the shifts between exhibition space that is either “played on” by art or “art-free”, the artist allows the pictorial space to be inverted in the space beyond these spaces through the framing edges of the light boxes. Once again, Valentin Ruhry succeeds in operating along the permeability of the boundaries between the respective inside and outside of disciplines. It is with this approach that he especially succeeds in detecting the threatening enmeshments of referential systems.

Exhibitions (Selection)

Marcel Duchamp and the contemporary readymade, Blain|Southern, London (2012)
Falsche Universalismen, Christine König Galerie, Vienna (2012)
All Work No Play, Austrian Cultural Forum London (2012)
2084, Photoville, New York (2012)
Formless – All Work No Play, Austrian Cultural Forum London (2011)
Moderne: Selbstmord der Kunst?, Neue Galerie Graz (2011)
Gute Aussichten, Moscow Biennale, Moscow (2011)
über dinge, Kunsthaus Muerz, Mürzzuschlag (2011)
EISENBERGER GUMHOLD KARNER RUHRY, Gerberhaus, Fehring (2011)