Desiring the Real. Austria Contemporary

Born in Munich in 1976, the artist explores the dividing line between public and private space through site-specific actions and interventions in outside spaces. The project for Museion also bears the traces of his engagement with external space, the urban setting and natural environment. During the first stage of the project Kessler will attempt to install a large sculpture representing a forkful of spaghetti in the picturesque Alpine landscape of South Tyrol. This “monument” is in fact made of very basic materials – a poster attached to wooden panels. Ironically referencing the challenge of eating spaghetti with a fork, the artist creates a sort of irreverent symbol of man’s victory over nature. In the project room the video telling the story of the project, how the sculpture was transported and installed appears alongside a large fork, tipping a wink to the adjacent Café Museion, and drawing a playful parallel between bistro signage and art work.

The focus on Austria’s up and coming artists continues with the video by Rainer Gamsjäger (Bad Ischl, 1974) entitled “Decomposition” and expressly created for Museion’s media façade. What we see is an image in “decomposition” that acquires an extremely sculptural feel: a purified stream of information and pixels that is the result of filming two classic elements from the history of painting: a skull, the definitive symbol of Vanitas, and a still life. “Decomposition” will be screened on Museion’s media façade, on the Talvera side of the building, on Thursday 20th and Friday 21st June at 10 p.m. It will be screened again on Tuesday 23rd July on occasion of the dance performance in the project room featuring the choreographer and dancer Sebastian Prantl, presented by the Südtiroler Kulturinstitut of Bolzano. On that occasion the publication regarding the projects featured in Desiring the Real in Museion will also be presented.

Judith Fegerl - Phasenraum (Phase Space): The project by Judith Fegerl (Vienna, 1977) entitled “Phase space” (Phasenraum) is inspired by an expression used in mechanics to describe the movement possible in a given space, and the transformation of space is indeed an integral part of the artist’s practice. In the project room she explores and “manipulates” the space, taking it to extremes and challenging to the very state of the matter used. In one of the installations the artist literally carves into one of the walls of the project room. What should be a load-bearing element is sliced open to reveal its cement core and then stitched up again, becoming a sort of excrescent growth. The wall thus becomes a long screen of panels that visitors are free to move around. In another work in the show the wall is criss-crossed by metal wires that resemble stitches and form a sort of three-dimensional design.