Jasper Sharp

Mathias Poledna: 55 Biennale di Venezia - Austrian Pavilion Jasper Sharp

Jacket Description/Flap: Mathias Poledna (b. Vienna, 2965; lives and works in Los Angeles) is developing a new project for the Austrian pavilion at the 55. Biennale di Venezia in 2013. The publication presents and contextualizes this year's contribution to the world's preeminent international art exhibition. Mathias Poledna's oeuvre examines interconnections between art and entertainment culture, modernism in architecture and design, the language of the cinema, and the history of exhibition-making. Publisher Marketing: Mathias Poledna (b. Vienna, 1965; lives and works in Los Angeles) is developing a new project for the Austrian pavilion at the 55. Biennale di Venezia in 2013. The publication presents and contextualizes this year's contribution to the world's preeminent international art exhibition. Mathias Poledna's oeuvre examines interconnections between art and entertainment culture, modernism in architecture and design, the language of the cinema, and the history of exhibition-making. His works are distinguished by a rigorous critical engagement with the medium of film and the function of images in the present and past. They have usually taken the form of highly focused film installations incorporating a wealth of references to twentieth-century culture. Poledna's new project explores the same dynamic field, tracing his artistic process, which is defined by continuities as well as deliberate and targeted discontinuities. Designed by the artist in collaboration with Martha Stutteregger, the publication contains contributions by the curator and commissioner of the Austrian pavilion, Jasper Sharp; the cultural scholar Diedrich Diederichsen; and the professor of political aesthetics Esther Leslie.

Contributor Bio:  Sharp, Jasper Co-director of The Creeping Garden documentary (with Tim Grabham), Jasper Sharp is an author, filmmaker, critic and curator. Internationally regarded for his work on Japanese cinema, he co-founded the Midnight Eye website. His books include The Midnight Eye Guide to New Japanese Film, Behind the Pink Curtain: The Complete History of Japanese Sex Cinema, and Historical Dictionary of Japanese Cinema. As well as a keen interest in mycology, his interests include the history of production & exhibition technologies, and has a PhD in Japanese Widescreen Cinema: Commerce, Technology and Aesthetics'.