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Cornelius Wildner, Vkusno i tochka (Schmeckt und Punkt), 2022, McDonald Big Mac, epoxy, sound, coaster
Cornelius Wildner, Vkusno i tochka (Schmeckt und Punkt), 2022, McDonald Big Mac, epoxy, sound, coaster

Isolated miniature human figures made of cardboard and tape (Habitat 1 – 8 by Stephan Hafner) are placed in completely closed cylindrical jars next to an underused swimming pool; a burger (maybe the last one sold in a McDonald subsidiary), sculpturally fixed in epoxy and accompanied with a melancholic soundtrack, brings the audience right into the actual Russian reality (Vkusno i tochka by Cornelius Wildner); a poplar trunk processed not only by the artist but also by a hungry beaver, to this a Dostoyevsky quote thematize the guilt we all carry with us (Acipenser ruthenus by Joachim Keller); a combined video and live performance (Home. ..still landing & „H.O.ME“ (Hate On Me) by Lava Gudjunova) makes the viewer reflect and maze with the frozen junctures, types of motions; followed by Elsa Martini, who delivers another contribution that is part of a larger (ongoing) cycle of interventions and documentations, entitled Contemporary Trash.

Stephan Hafner. Habitat 1 – 8
The term habitats is used to describe living spaces for animals and plants, as well as dwelling places for humans.

The objects have experiences of isolation during the pandemic as their theme.

However, they also symbolize our need for security and protection, which has been heightened by the multiple crises and threats of our time.

Cornelius Wildner. Vkusno i tochka (Schmeckt und Punkt)
In this work, the artist focuses on the withdrawal of an American fast food chain from the Russian market due to sanctions. With the help of a local artist collective, the audience can embark on a sonic journey to a newly opened Vkusno i tochka subsidiary in St. Petersburg. Wildner underlines the continuing longing for the American way of life, supported by the regime, woven in a melancholic soundtrack, combined with a burger, sculpturally captured in epoxy. A voice in this work annotates, „The name changes, the love remains.“ A fusion of documentary working methods, a work in which nothing is true, yet everything is.

Cornelius Wildner, Vkusno i tochka (Schmeckt und Punkt), 2022, sound, 10’09“. Location Scouting & Recording: BIOROBOTY019 & Alexander Pleshakov

Joachim Keller. Acipenser ruthenus
„Every one is really responsible to all men for all men and for everything.“- Fyodor Dostoyevsky. I have chosen, therefore the sterlet, or rather its skeleton, as a symbol for these connections. Man is at war also with nature, at an inflationary speed he destroys it, and nature is hitting back with Corona and suchlike. The sculpture is made out of wood from the trunk of a cottonwood tree, that the beaver had already started to work on, through out of hunger. A find from the Danube Bank.

Lava Gudjunova (Desislava Gujunova). HOME… still landing & „H.O.ME“ (Hate On Me)
„HOME ..still landing“, 2021, is a video reflection by Lava Gudjunova (Desislava Gujunova), shot largely independently with an action camera. The naturalistic imagery aims to reveal the harsh nature of reality. The editing is based on two sound samples by kosupure (Julian Forster). Something like a pictorial choreography. „H.O.ME“ (Hate On Me) is a performative installation for interactive reflection. Translated into the present, the body and its surroundings on the one hand, and one’s own perception on the other, can be modified in the open space. The focus falls on perception. Intuitive gestures create a short-term relationship – similar to so-called contact improvisation, where harmony is not sought, but rather stimulation. A kind of derailing of habits. Why „Hate,“ you might ask? Hate puts the principle of competition under a magnifying glass – I think love can only exist if there is no evaluation.  

Elsa Martini. Contemporary Trash 
… is a series of photographs and interventions of human trash, brought to a „sophisticated“ level. They have become „Cleaner“.
This series begins with photographs taken on the island of Santorini in 2021, when, in addition to the stress and difficulties of travel at that time, the stress of vaccinations, tests, complicated online applications, and the expectation of a well-chosen travel destination, was accompanied by the apparent normality of seeing masks forgotten, scattered around, or jokes made with them, as in the photograph of a masked sphinx in a private space, where I could only photograph through the fence. Masks contain plastic, and their disintegration in nature is as impossible as any other plastic. This is an issue that has been considered recently, but we still do not have a solution. The authorities continue to order us to wear masks even in the 36-37 degree temperature on Vienna’s non-AC public transportation, even though we are not convinced that this protection is effective, or if it is simply a reaction to fearful policies and crisis mismanagement. 

And as for site-specific interventions, they are made in the semi-inhabited area along the Danube, in the so-called quiet area before the Danube enters the city of Vienna. Declared flood risk areas, these places serve as channels for the excess flows of the Danube to save the city of Vienna from flooding. Residents of these areas have to live with this.

The intervention with masks placed in the idyllic landscape is an emotional state left behind by the imaginary flood. The series is still in progress, documented with photos and videos of happenings-intervention, such as for the performative exhibition „Krisenezeiten“, and will be finalized with a video installation, as a finished work, projected at night, in the calm waters of the ponds created along the Danube.

Performative Exhibition: 31.07.2022

Address and contact:
Donaulände 5, Kritzendorf
www.instagram.com/nata_wien_/

Her paintings are an immediate and direct channel through which the artist shapes her emotional landscape at a given moment, occasionally blending in specific memories of her past experiences.

I thought trees stood up straight… I only found out just now. They actually stand with both arms in the earth, all of them. (…) Do you know how I found out? Well, I was in a dream, and I was standing on my head… leaves were growing from my body, and roots were sprouting from my hands.

On Friday, August 12, the exhibition opens at “Pfeufer 38” with objects by the Chinese artist Ma Jun and three Munich artists, namely Hubertus Hamm, Felix Rehfeld and Martin Spengler.

Umbral is a world of unspoken relations, a labyrinth of hybrid objects, a transit zone where one must navigate feelings of déjà vu and fears of looming future events. It can be translated as a threshold or doorstep.

In an Ancient Greek comedy by Aristophanes, clouds are something more than mere decoration or staffage, more than the matter out of which impressive landscapes are moulded, as of clay.

Wrocław Contemporary Museum presents installations, video works and a series of graphics . The duo’s creative work stems from their fascination with the relations between sound and space.

Sara Rahmanian is a multidisciplinary artist fascinated by everyday objects and the absurdity of contemporary life. She uses painting to explore the imaginative gaps between reality and perception.

It is within this play’s tradition, reproducibility, and Lenora de Barros spirit that develops her work. The physiognomy of her work is a set of particular games. The artist plays and, without winning or losing.

Each of the wall pieces in Julia’s exhibition “Five Finger Discount” center around an oil painting of a rather old-school shop: multiple butchers (kosher and not-kosher, of course), a flower store, a tailor.

This exhibition encompasses the intuitive, raw and experimental spirit of the artist. The mix of vivid colors, subject matter and applied techniques of this specific curation are a reflection of the artist’s practice.

Galleria Umberto Di Marino presents Sergio Vega’s recent project titled A cloud-forest of paper and ink. The solo show is focused on his photographic works in black and white taken in the Amazonian region.

When I got the opportunity to conduct this interview, I realized that i wanted to talk to the artist not only about the Biennale, but also about earlier, smallscale works such as Father (2009), Dancefloor (2009), or those Polaroid outcomes that show only the belly part of each of the women who have caused, generated (as Tosatti says) something meaningful on him (Senza Titolo (matrice), 2010-2011). The interview was conducted in June 2022.

Freda Fiala and River Lin are the curatorial duo of “The Non-fungible Body?” performance festival that just celebrated its inaugural edition in Linz. Congratulations on the first edition!

From September 8-11, 2022, Vienna’s international contemporary art fair will take place for the first time on the extraordinary premises of the neo-renaissance palace Kursalon Vienna, in the heart of the city.

Back in Odesa, Tanya tells me, her life-like sculptures of cats populated the city’s structures; they lounged and napped in the sun, stretched, hunted, and ate fish (or dreamt of eating it).

CLOSING SOON presents I Was Lost In Untamed Forms Of Hidden Experiences, In Vast Places That Are Eliminated, a solo exhibition of Eva Anerrapsi. The installation consists of an archive of thoughts.

ich & ik is the second part of the two part exhibition series where Roman Pfeffer and Peter De Meyer find each other in an intriguing, multi-layered dialogue about the ‚I‘ in its different appearances.