Cut 2 is one of a total of around 25 video sculptures designed and completed by Gundi Berghold. With this category of work, a typical one for the early 1990s, video as a medium broke away from earlier attempts to reflect on the medium's intrinsic prerequisites, and introduces a new understanding of video in a context of sculptural objects. The drawn quality of geometric architecture in Cut 2 establishes the link to the setting of the work, while a number of polarities come into play: the difference between the material and the non-material, between the presence of a raw metal and the apparently non-material quality of light, between the fleeting, the transient, and something that has existed for longer. These are not merely classical issues in the history of art, they are what lends the work its basic meditative tenor ? also being equated with the historically successful reception of artworks.

The basic frame for Cut 2 is an iron construction with a diameter of over two metres, lying on the floor. This construction has a gap where two monitors receive a signal and emit pulses of light that suggests a quasi non-material closing of the circle. "It gets interesting when a TV no longer serves as a playback device for video or film productions or for surveillance purposes, but gains and makes possible a new and broader significance with its use. For example, it can be used to render traces of light visible when a dot of light appears on the screen briefly and moves in the circle suggested by the iron construction. ...Iron in the form of profiled tubing proves to be an archaic form of the perishable material, and video as a medium proved to be the ideal addition with its minimalist movement, to have two apparently fundamentally different forms of expression communicate with one another." (Gundi Berghold interviewed by Hannelore Kersting, Katalog Gundi Berghold, Städtisches Museum Abteiberg Mönchengladbach, 1996)
(Patricia Grzonka/Jonathan Quinn, Engl.)

Exhibitions

Einzelausstellung Gundi Berghold, 1991

Blau-Gelbe Galerie, NÖ Landesgalerie, Wien, Austria

Objekt Video, 1996

Landesgalerie Oberösterreich, Linz, Austria

Specifications

no sound color/bw

Technical protocol

Amiga computer controlling two monitors, animation program, digital signals

Video installation with computer animation on two monitors; spherical raw-iron sculpture, diameter 210 cm

Production

Gundi Berghold

Sponsorship

Niederösterreichische Landesgalerie

Copyright

Gundi Berghold

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