It was animals that were created first, only thereafter, human beings. Seniority, the privilege of age, was compensated by the privilege of designation, the late arrival meant: “the ability to observe and appropriately designate what came before“. (Peter Sloterdijk) But human beings are the notorious late arrivers, one should not be deceived by the biblical version. Because humans only come into their own through language, the individual must always harbor the eerily daunting gap of pre-linguistic existence.

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When Deborah Sengl uses metalinguistic capability in order to create a new word, she refers to the fact that the found language masks as much as it reveals. By creating the word “ertarnen“ (“to deceive through displacement”), which is used in most of the titles of her artworks, she incapsulates the central themes of her work: humans, animals, camouflage, and breeding. more »

A grid-like strut frame, constructed out of several vertical and horizontal aluminum rods, stands in the space, and is held both together and upright by means of a chaotic network of wide black rubber bands with no visible beginning or end. The sculpture conveys a precarious stability, based on workings of gravity, traction, pressure, and friction. Bringing attention to the forces that constitute a work is a central concern of the artist, Michael Kienzer. Through the methods of interlacing, interweaving, and extensive tension, he creates links, references, connections between things and materials, and thereby reveals the fact that it is not the elements themselves, but the mutual relations between the elements—what is formed in between—that represents the character of a work.

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Kienzer completed his degree at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Graz and the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, where he studied sculpture under Bruno Gironcoli. For his work—which has received numerous awards, among them the Monsignore Otto Mauer Award—he uses various media; for objects, installations, and designs, he takes different approaches to themes such as space, time, surface, compression, materiality, image, and the original. His sculptural interventions are mostly site-specific, working within the means of a given space. For example, in a lapidary fashion, two aluminum plates are set up straight across a space, supported only by themselves and the walls, drawing attention to the physical forces at work, therby shifting them, and changing the viewer’s perspective of the structures, which at first appear unalterable. more »

The early works of Oswald Oberhuber, born in Meran in 1931, are classified as informal sculpture. The artist has always felt that it was too limiting to develop himself artistically as the representative of a specific style. In the late 1950s, Oberhuber was already turning against an understanding of art oriented toward styles and pursued a theory and practice of permanent change. As an artist, as a teacher and head at the University of Applied Art in Vienna, and as a director of the Galerie nächst St. Stephan, Oberhuber’s work pursues new directions and breaks conventional notions. In the early 1970s, in an Innsbruck hospital, he produced an abstract sculpture out of industrially manufactured exhaust tubes. The art work—which defied the usual conceptions of art—became a nationwide sensation, but then somehow ended up in the hands of a plumber. An artist protest saved the work of art from being divided up and sold off for individual parts.

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For the Belvedere in Vienna, Oberhuber has created a site-specific installation which includes drawings, paintings, and sculptures that are thematically related to Prince Eugen of Savoy, who was the founder of the Belvedere. Thematic exhibitions suit the artist. The thematic approach accommodates his resolution of permanent change: it not only permits artistic movement, but challenges it as well. more »

Maria Lassnig: “Soft as marmalade, marmalade out of blood I’m batted and feel hindered and left locked out from the world of painting.”

“There was a saying, if a boy is born, parents drink a schnapps, but if it is a girl they would only celebrate with water or even less … nothing”, recollects Maria Lassnig in one of her recently numerous interviews

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Born in 1919 she started to scribble her first artworks at a very young age. Once her mother even seeked the help of a fortune teller because her little girl was holding her hands in such a crooked way while drawing, that she looked like a fool. Although her mother was told to support her daughter, her only thought was to get her married to a decent man to keep her out of harm’s way. more »

In the view from above, the earth appears as an unpopulated globe. Zoom in, and a view appears of regions and cities, houses and roadways, playgrounds and parks, cafes and stores, all populated by humans who appear tiny, like ants, occupied, engaged in a multiplicity of movements. The view from above relativizes the action. It strips the individual of particularity. and dissipates into the countless paths of the masses. Such an overview of the viewer is primarily based on this moment of his unobservedness, aloofness, and distance.

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What if, however, curiosity strikes? If the view creeps ever closer, for those who are interested in checking out life below in more detail? It involves the unavoidable risk of the voyeur: being caught in the act by a sudden, disturbingly inverted gaze. more »

Gordan Savicic, graduate of the digital art department of the University for Applied Arts in Vienna, master’s degree from the Piet Zwart Institute for Media Design Art, Design, Hacking, and Leisure in Rotterdam. Self designation: independent electronics specialist, developer, speaker, and RealGamer. In his work, the artist argues, in a playful and sophisticated way, for virtual worlds based on information and communication technologies and their influence on the material world.

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The virtual does not only produce consequences in the virtual world. The sociologist Manuell Castells describes this phenomenon in his work on “The Information Age” like this: The terms for space in the virtual world are described as currents and networks of capital. At its hubs, the virtual space in material space introduces frantic cities and desolates entire regions. Within the virtual space, the future is pre-digested in a speculative manner and that which is not appetizing does not arrive in the present. more »

Picture for yourself reality. Is that reality immediate, direct, unexpected? Should we attribute this power of reality to something within the medium or to the medium itself? Reality, realized as a procedure of exclusion, as an attempt at reduction, has reigned over the scientific and artistic arguments that have existed over centuries. In the last twentieth century, this gateway was submerged in the continually rising flood of the everyday vocabulary of visual art.

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The influence of this radical change on the work of the painter Franziska Maderthaner is visible. Instead of reduction, construction, de- and re-construction, and bricolage prevail. Instead of strict exclusion, surplus of meaning. Instead of the pathos of one, a play with references with which to assemble and compose. more »

In 2007, he was the winner of the Cologne Art Award, one year later, he is nominated for the Strabag Art Award in Vienna. Bernhard Buhmann was born in 1979 in Vorarlberg. He is young and talented. His works are developed in his studio, and he is still studying under the direction of Johanna Kandl at the University for Applied Art.

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Artistically speaking, the painter is in an intermediary phase. When one’s own paintings have received such acknowledgments, there is the temptation to continue to reproduce that which has brought success. Although having financial security is certainly a relief, Buhmann has decided to move on to his next phase artistically. more »

The little superhero, Superrobbie, who looks like a Playmobil figure, appears together with his other little brothers-in-arms in an image that resembles children’s room wallpaper, strewn in cheerful crayon shades. Surrounded by cute little ducklings, little Superrobbie places himself in a scene of contrasting reality, toting a pistol in his hand. Stretched out before him are his dead teachers, who are embodied in a similar Playmobil form. The dark side of the image reveals itself in its title: “Erfurt”.

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Christian Pölzler create his art under the brand name, Heidi Popovic, which may seem cynical at first, but actually isn’t. Through pop poster images, through decorative wallpaper samples, through advertisements that promise us that “everything is OK”, Pölzler salvages forgotten images and maps a modern political apocalypse. more »

Ian Fleming, the inventor of the character James Bond, published a book in 1964 which he dedicated to his son, Caspar. The story is about a poor inventor called Karaktakus Pott, who buys an old vehicle for his twin children, which—with a little imagination and inventive skill—he transforms into a marvelous device that can transport them on magical journeys. As the Pott family thereupon embarks on many adventures, the vehicle earns an onomatopoeic name, inspired by the inventor’s constant vacillation between failure and success: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

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When one asks the young Viennese artist, Leo Peschta, for influences on his artistic work from his childhood, he mentions Karaktakus Pott. Innovation, fascination with technology, the defunct compilation of components originally designed to function, the readiness to fail, joy in the undefined—these elements connect the artist with the character from Fleming’s novel. more »