Group Show
To Define And Punish
10 April - 9 May 2015
The exhibition To Define and Punish features ten young European artists: Adrian Buschmann (GER), Bernhard Buff (GER), Michael Fanta (AT), Karine Fauchard (F), Julie Gufler (DK), Toke Flyvholm (DEN), Michèle Pagel (DEN), Thea Moeller (GER), Lazar Lyutakov (BG) and Mads Westrup (DEN).
With a few exceptions, all are students or alumni from Akademie der Bildenden Künste (Daniel Ricther Klasse) in Vienna – by many considered the leading art academy in Europe. From Mads Westrup’s naïve sports car paintings to Karine Fauchard’s ethced paper works and Bernhard Buff’s beautiful slingshot sculpture the works are all highly demanding and thus worth experiencing up close. We’re excited about this powerful showcase of young European talent.
To Define and Punish
By the end of Winter, I placed the weight on my toes not to steal a march on the seasons.
Elsewhere, Spring’s tender breaches were attended by the wild applause of those amongst the score gathered inside a tall European building; this was a consequence of cold hands and unfamiliar faces joined. In a muddy attempt to fill out the space between own truths and other people’s furniture, each had walked back and forth; between the newly painted surfaces, between intentions and tall buildings, arms in the air for four straight weeks of lifting. But in the cracks of the earth, they had found an alibi in favour of shifting those arms to the horizon and forwards in order to choke the air, which kept them apart, in a worldwide crash.
Eyes dispersed on the sound about to happen before them, it started up like a sporadic clutter, an impolite lawn in January where the lack of information shows as bald spots hedging the remaining bright green islands of elation. Then it waxed into a steady, massive heartbeat, which finally gave way to the roaring, multitudinous cascade. While the air in the room fought and fluttered, the walls were ringing under the pressure of promises and rain unfelt.
That is what the incredulous miens exchanged on the way her Je this morning meant, that which they wanted me to put down, are you clapping at me. My palms still carry the sweet sensation of lying entirely stretched out against one another. At first the hands’ weight resist the flight of the idea. Then a surge of release. A friendly spirit of sharing between hands and feelings: Not that which one loves, but that which one would like to love.
At an art show, the crisp clap of winter hands is of course a useless means of applause. One such gesture made in front of an object means nothing. It cannot even bow in return, but lives on unchanged in its objectness. Otherwise with those of us who pant out our lives at its feet.
To escape winter unscathed, I let my heels flow slightly above ground; in the name of Spring, I shall carry with me this inherent weapon and buy a round for anyone who cares to look at it up close.
A warm, crackling explosion with no casualties seems a reasonable starting point for an economy of the real that will take us onto the other side of Summer. Or into the house of another whose furniture we have not seen as of yet. What temperature makes a friend anyways; that point where skin meets air. I thought I saw some green excrescence spilling out of your buttonhole. If it comes back, you can cut it.
By Julie Gufler