Club Fortuna – Artistic Intervention
Stadtgarten Gmunden
Saturday, 29. June 2024, 5 p.m.
For the third AIR 101 guest performance at the Salzkammergut Festival, initiator Andrea Bier invites the internationally active artist collective Club Fortuna to Gmunden to inscribe themselves in the culture of the region with a site-specific intervention.
Since 2014, the protagonists Xenia Lesniewski, Nana Mandl, Verena Preininger and Sarah Sternat have been thematising current developments, social mechanisms and the uncompromising way in which young artists cope with everyday life. In the form of pointed biographical border crossings, they question the current role of artists as well as the associated responsibility for society as a whole with irony and sharpness.
The artistic intervention by Club Fortuna will be presented in the Stadtgarten at the same time as gmunden.photo.
Epilog zum hedonistischen Spiel in den Überresten eines Salettls: Fünfzehn geschlechter-unspezifischen Podexe offenbaren den Anus, ein Körperteil, der in der klassischen griechischen Skulptur absichtlich ausgelassen wurde. Diese gezielte Abwesenheit spiegelt antike Ideale von Schönheit und Reinheit wider, die bestimmte Körperbereiche aus ästhetischen und moralischen Überlegungen ausklammerten.
In dieser Inszenierung wird der Anus jedoch sichtbar gemacht, um die Grenzen traditioneller Darstellungen zu überschreiten und die Komplexität menschlicher Körperlichkeit zu betonen. Der Anus fungiert hier potenziell als Sexualorgan, bleibt jedoch in jedem Fall ohne identitäre Zuschreibung. Durch die bewusste Präsentation eines Merkmals, das weder ausschließlich männlich noch weiblich ist, wird die Diversität und Fluidität von Geschlechtsidentitäten unterstrichen.
Diese Darstellung dient als kritischer Kommentar zur historischen und kulturellen Konstruktion von Geschlecht und Sexualität. Im Kontext eines Lustgartens fordert sie die Betrachtenden auf, die Vielfalt menschlicher Existenz anzuerkennen. Die geschlechterunspezifischen Podexe machen somit die oft unsichtbaren Aspekte der Körperlichkeit und Identitätsbildung sichtbar.
Text: Shelly Goldstine
On the occasion of the Salzkammergut Festwochen Gmunden 2023 AIR 101 presents the art production
Marcus Geiger – défense (Farbe am Dach)
Stadtgarten Gmunden
Opening: 1. July 2023, 5 p.m.
»Stadtgarten Gmunden: For the second time after 2022, the area of the former Stadtgärtnerei Gmunden, now Stadtgarten Gmunden, was transformed into an art park this summer: at the invitation of AIR 101 founder Andrea Bier, Marcus Geiger realised a project on the site that deals with the location and its structure and examines the relationship between public space and history. Geiger's conceptual practice includes site-specific interventions based on intensive research. The special situation of the Stadtgärtnerei as an evolved historical area that is now to be made accessible to the public formed the starting point of his considerations. Since the Stadtgärtnerei moved out, the area has been left to its own devices; three glasshouses, only one of which is still standing, were severely damaged in a hailstorm in 2021. The remaining last glass house lives on today as a ›garden ruin‹ or ›hut‹, parts of the old plantings are still in place - depending on how you look at it, the site is a ›wasteland‹ or a recapture area for nature.
In addition to an intervention on the roof of the glass house, Geiger realised a series of posters whose abstracted motifs make reference to the site, but at the same time are conceived in such a casual way that they exude a certain timelessness. With his approach, the artist shows the borderline of what it means to distinguish a defined from an undefined area. The exhibitions at Stadtgarten Gmunden are based on the initiatives of AIR 101 and gmunden.photo.«
Text: Patricia Grzonka
Marcus Geiger – AIR 101
Curator: Axel Huber
Opening: 1. July 2023
Duration: 2. 7. — 13. 8. 2023
Stadtgarten Gmunden (Johann Tagwerker-Straße 12, 4810 Gmunden)
Opening hours: Tue–Sun, 1–8 p.m.
In summer 2022 AIR 101 presented
14 positions of contemporary sculpture
at three different locations in Gmunden
As part of the artist-in-residence program AIR 101, numerous artists stay in the studio building at Lake Traunsee by invitation of initiator Andrea Bier. On the occasion of the Salzkammergut Festwochen Gmunden 2022, Andrea curated three exhibitions together with her companion Petra Zechmeister.
EPHEMERE
AIR @ Garten
AIR101 @ Kirche
EPHEMERE
2. – 31. July 2022
Hipp-Halle Gmunden
Th & Fr: 5–9 p.m., Sa: 10 a.m.–1 p.m.; Friday, 22. July from 3 p.m.
In the spacious ambience of the Hipp-Hall, diverging artistic positions meet and make the listed ambience vibrate in a variety of ways.
Anna Jermolaewa (*1970, , Leningrad/USR)
Kiev (After Lumiere), 2021 | Video: 4:36 min
The film projection Kiev (After Lumiere) by the artist Anna Jermolaewa brings video images taken in a section of a flea market in Kiev onto a large screen. The work from 2021 has gained a special dimension for the artist through the Russian attack on Kiev, because it is a Russian train that thwarts the scene.
Constantin Luser (*1976, Graz/AT)
Bandoneon Intensivstation, 2012 | 250 x 250 x 308 cm | Bandoneons, wood, steel, diverse elements
The installation, assembled from eight bandoneons, is supplied with an air flow via a converted vacuum cleaner and can be played collectively by the audience.
Peter Sandbichler (*1964, Kufstein/AT)
Twist #03, 2021 | 2400 x 270 x270 cm | Cardboard, color
The sculpture with a length of 24 meter consists of almost 60 individual modules, which were folded from used bicycle boxes in such a way that they are structurally stable without additional reinforcement while floating horizontally in space.
Eva Schlegel
Ohne Titel, 2022 | 3 acrylic glass mirrors each 2m ø
Two convex mirrors placed next to each other correspond to a third mirror mounted on the wall. The mirror object draws the exhibition visitors into the gently moving reflection space which opens up new views and perspectives.
AIR @ Garten
2. July – 14. August 2022
Stadtgarten Gmunden
Tu-Su: 2–9 p.m.
As a further exhibition location, the facility of the former city nursery will be enlivened with art. The former sales room, together with the dilapidated glass house, forms the ambience for four artists interventions who together generate a multi-layered dystopian scenario.
Anna Paul (*1987, Carinthia/AT)
Endless Toilets, 2021 | Industrial ceramic, plant
Visitors are welcomed by a tower of five toilet shells stacked on top of each other, with a green plant growing out of the top opening. With her object-related interventions and performative processes, the artist raises awareness of everyday rituals.
Marit Wolters (*1985, Achim/DE)
Seismic Friction, 2022 | Ceramic materials
The objects, reminiscent of boulders and made of various natural ceramic materials, have a camouflage character. Only on closer inspection the fragments reveal that they are not authentic but artificial.
Xenia Lesniewski (*1985, Frankfurt am Main/DE)
Apocalypso Bar, 2022 | Room installation
The subtly furnished Apocalypso Bar seduces you into a doomsday scenario. In the ambivalence between existential fear and surging lust for life, the Endzeit Cocktail served by the artist offers a clear way out, at least temporarily.
Sofia Goscinski (*1979, Wien/AT)
Desert Plants, 2020 | Concrete, bronze
Through an empty door frame in the Apokalypso Bar, the view opens onto a garden ruin in which Sofia Goscinski has planted a dense field of bronze steles. The tips of the desert plants grow towards glass roof which the wind and weather has destroyed long before.
AIR 101 @ Kirche
2. – 31. July 2022
Bürgerspitalkirche St. Jakob
Th & Fr: 5–9 p.m., Sa: 10 a.m.–1 p.m.
The Bürgerspitalkirche Sankt Jakob founded in 1340, was activated as a third location for the presentation of contemporary art. Six current positions of contemporary art are mixed into the rich furnishings of the neo-Gothic sacred space.
Luka Jana Berchtold (*1990, Vorarlberg/AT)
Just hangin, 2021 | Climbing rope, concrete block
Even in front of the entrance, the sculptor Jana Luka Berchtold, who deals with alpinism, artistically opens up the dimension of the vertical.
Luka Jana Berchtold (*1990, Vorarlberg/AT)
Friends friend, 2020 | Aluminium, ceramics
Julia Haugeneder (*1987, Wien/AT)
Series Chapal, fold 322, fold 332, fold 320, 2022 | Acrylic
The work group Series Chapal, fold 322, fold 332, fold 320 was created specifically for the special sacral ambience. Although made of acrylic (bookbinder's glue and bubble wrap), the objects appear fleshy and tempt to haptic interaction.
Toni Schmale (*1980, Hamburg/DE)
Gedinge, 2020 | Steel, concrete, silicon
On occasion of the Msg. Otto Mauer Prize 2021 in his laudatory speech Gustav Schörghofer wrote about Schmale’s sculptures: »None of these objects may be touched, although they literally cry out to be touched. They are images for viewing only, designed to evoke imaginations.«
Thea Moeller (*1985, Hannover/DE)
Blue light / orange, 2021 | Metal, acrylic glass, LED-strip
The paravent-like object presents itself as a game of deception for visual perception, because the color changes depending on whether the blue LED dots light up in front of or behind the transparent orange pane.
Dejan Dukic (*1974, Bosnia)
No title, 2022 | Oil through canvas
On each of the side walls, three picture objects flank the spatial axis. Dukic's compositions, which are sometimes reminiscent of landscapes or organic structures, are created by pushing the oil paint through the canvas from behind.
