On Saturday, June 20 at 20:00 PM the opening of the exhibition NEW (KRISTL DREAMS) NO WORK (ALL GO) by Austrian artist Christian Egger will take place at Apoteka – space for contemporary art.
The exhibition remains open until July 31.
The exhibition NEW (KRISTL DREAMS) NO WORK (ALL GO) continues Christian Egger’s ongoing series of exhibition concepts developed primarily through language. The Vienna-based artist and writer attempts to approach the life and work of Vlado Kristl (1923-2004) in this exhibition. There are many points of interest for Egger regarding the Croatian painter, filmmaker, and writer who lived in Germany for many years. Egger is fascinated by the awkwardness and tenacity in Kristl’s life and work, the effort, the contradictions, and the scattered barbs that resist such artistic pretensions of purported approach within an exhibition setting.
Everything he values in Kristl’s work—elements of audience disappointment, the strengthening of fleeting moments, the avoidance of success, the rejection of representational conventions, a general propaganda of boredom, the questioning of meaning-making, and the creation of moments in which the compulsion to behave is suspended—is close to Egger’s heart. Yet he prefers to let Kristl remain this shining example of his own work, rather than attempting to force his engagement with it into a form open to contemporary interpretation. Therefore, Egger will stage rather than dare to engage with Kristl and his work in retrospect, séances, and public reflections. He will draw upon post- and neo-conceptual and contextual approaches accessible to him, dissolving the boundaries of the work and thus exposing the impossibility of criticizing Kristl as his own powerlessness.
NEW (KRISTL DREAMS) NO WORK (ALL GO) will thus present itself through the media of drawing, sculpture, and text, and in this exploration he seeks, new works emerge that oscillate between desire, assertion, and the attempt to connect, while also outlining the altered circumstances and the questions that these approaches, whatever form they may take, must navigate.
NEW (KRISTL DREAMS) NO WORK (ALL GO) cannot present Kristl as one Kristl, but perhaps illustrates the fear that arises when one tries to distance oneself from artistic positions that exert a strong attraction, which is why this exhibition may have no end.
Christian Egger lives in Vienna as a visual artist, musician, and freelance writer. He is co-editor of the artists’ fanzine www.ztscrpt.net. Solo presentations of his work were recently shown in Vienna at Kunstraum am Schauplatz, at 20 20 and Charim Schleifmühlgasse, as well as at The Horse (Dublin) and Kunstraum Schwaz. In addition to numerous exhibition publications, his texts are regularly published in international art magazines such as ArtReview, Texte zur Kunst, SPIKE, Springerin, Camera Austria, and many more. His book Shows, Signals, Unvernehmen brings together texts from 2005 to 2020 and was published by Floating Opera Press (Berlin).
Apoteka is supported by the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia, the Kultura Nova Foundation, the City of Vodnjan, the Istria County, the TZ Vodnjan and Medea Wines.
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