exhibition
photography
installation
a place where secrets have been told - das könnte unter einem Tisch passiert sein oder zwischen zwei Stühlen, verhüllt mit einer Decke, unter der sich zwei Kinder Geheimnisse erzählen, vielleicht von Dingen, die sie gesehen oder fast gesehen haben. Sie sind Komplizen in einer eigenen Realität, das macht sie stark und lässt sie frohen Mutes, die Decke lüftend, Neues sehen und tun. Rückzug ist angesagt. Nicht um sich zu verstecken, sondern um Raum und Zeit zu gewinnen. Zum Fühlen, Wahrnehmen, Ordnen, Sinnieren und Sein - und dann auf Reisen zu gehen. Sich in der Ferne näher kommen. Den Fremden in sich zu begegnen und ihnen ein Haus zu bauen. Farbig, sanft, transparent, im Wechselspiel zwischen innen und außen. Den Horizont in den Händen haltend, mal näher bei sich, mal weiter draußen. Da treffen sich die kleine und die große Welt. Und manchmal, für einen kurzen Augenblick der perfekten Komposition, passt die eine in die andere und der Pfirsich der Erkenntnis ruht in sich. Text: Monika Abendstein
- This could have happened under a table or between two chairs, covered by a blanket, under which two children tell each other secrets, perhaps about things they have seen or almost seen. They are accomplices in a reality of their own, which makes them strong and allows them to see and do new things cheerfully, lifting the blanket. Retreat is the order of the day. Not to hide, but to gain space and time. To feel, perceive, organize, ponder and be - and then go on a journey. To get closer to yourself in the distance. To meet the strangers within and build them a house. Colorful, soft, transparent, in the interplay between inside and outside. Holding the horizon in your hands, sometimes closer to yourself, sometimes further out. This is where the small and the big world meet. And sometimes, for a brief moment of perfect composition, one fits into the other and the peach of knowledge rests within itself. Text: Monika Abendstein
a place where secrets have been told
Reich für die Insel, Innsbruck (A)
09.11.2024 - 24.01.2025
Multi-layered horizons (and beyond)
text by Linnea Streit
A large crowd of people in and in front of the building on the forecourt of Innsbruck's Landestheater. It had been an unusually sunny November day, but now it was already dark and perhaps one or the other was caught up in a queasy feeling. What will happen to our world? Just this week, Donald Trump was re-elected President of the USA and the elections in Austria a few weeks ago also show a picture of a divided society, part of which is moving ever further to the right. No wonder people are longing for a ray of hope and feel drawn to the colorful glow of the RFDINSEL cube. Finding shelter together in this cocoon. And then there's the promising text on the invitation card! A piece of the “peach of knowledge ”1 in a “place where secrets have been told ”2 - who could resist?
Contrary to the expectations that may have been aroused, knowledge did not pass through the stomach in the form of a fruit that evening, was not served on a silver platter, remained a secret that everyone could fathom for themselves. Those who were open to it perhaps sought it in a state of trance, which was induced by the sounds of Marko Sulz's sound performance at the opening. Vibrating, black “sinus mountains”, floor objects somewhere between a singing bowl and jelly, supported this meditation.
Looking at the large-format, fresco-like drawing on the ceiling, it was easy to get lost in the search for the origin, for the first hand with which the game of mutual touching, the establishment of (skin) contact began.
The intimate relationships that develop reflect the mood between the artists with whom Nicole Weniger formed a temporary community during her artist residency in Tel Aviv in 2023, during which most of the analog photographs in the exhibition were taken. The motif of hands appears several times. The artist has transferred it to different carrier materials, which she then carried to different locations and photographed. How do the interpretations and meanings change depending on the context?
Other motifs also recur and are drawn into the space - be it because the artist also prints the shells painted with wide-open eyes on the fabric of one of the tents, crowning it with the leaves of a palm tree, or because the transparent curtains in different colors have found their way into the upper part of the exhibition as an independent element. Tents and curtains transform it into a kind of stage, on or in which the performance by Mar Mordente also opened up further perspectives and layers of meaning. As in a play with several acts, Weniger also repeatedly added elements to the exhibition. For example, black and neon-yellow wax formations created by pouring the liquid material into cold water, as in classic lead casting. They seem to be another attempt to gain insights into the future.
However, while the real shadows cast, like the general atmosphere in the room, change depending on the time of day, the artist fixes one of these states with orange paint on the apricot-painted wall - fixed - but on what? Ultimately, the spots remain open to numerous interpretations, to the trials and tribulations of life.
In addition to a stage, the room also becomes a studio, an experimental laboratory, a protected place for new ideas and, last but not least, a studio in which the already multi-layered photographs form the basis for future photographic works. The journey to new insights and horizons continues.
