GALLERY MAGAZINE | AUTUMN - WINTER 2022

ALINA KUNITSYNA Studio View, 2022

© Thomas Maier

HIGHLIGHTS

ACAYE KERUNEN Gallery Representation

ALEXANDER BASIL at Artissima

MAXIMILIAN PRÜFER at Kiaf Seoul

ALINA KUNITSYNA New Publication

HERMANN NITSCH 6-Day-Play

EXHIBITIONS

JUN. 10TH – JUL. 31ST / HERMANN NITSCH

SEP. 9TH – OCT. 8TH / CURATED BY

OCT. 11TH – NOV. 12TH / ALEXANDER BASIL

NOV. 17TH – JAN. 14TH / ALINA KUNITSYNA

FOCUS ON

SEP. 9TH OCT. 8TH / SARAH BECHTER

OCT. 11TH NOV. 12TH / NANA MANDL

NOV. 17TH JAN. 14TH / THÉO VIARDIN

ACAYE KERUNEN

Gallery Representation

Galerie Kandlhofer is pleased to announce the gallery’s representation of Acaye Kerunen.

Acaye Kerunen is a multidisciplinary performance and installation artist, storyteller, writer, poet actress and activist based in Kampala, Uganda. She graduated with a BSc in Mass Communication from the Islamic University in Uganda, Kampala and obtained a Diploma in Information Systems Management from Aptech.

Acaye was the Assistant Director on the Volcano Theatre production of Goodness in Canada in 2012 and is the founding Director of KEBU Theatre. In 2012, Vogue Italia Magazine featured her as one of the social activists Africa should watch closely. Since a young age Acaye has also been an actress and has performed in productions such as Silent Voice by Judith Adong. Her poetry and musical theatre, which was published under the same title in 2006 - DAWN OF THE PEARL have received public performances at the National Theatre in Uganda, and the Phoenix theatre in Kenya, launching her career as a director/producer/composer. Acaye has written stories for publications including the Ministry of Education, Bayimba Productions, and FEMRITE Uganda. She also writes for various online and print media, both locally and internationally.

Much of Acaye’s work involves collaborations with women, some in transition from domestic violence, pover ty or internal displacement. A feminism rhetoric emerges promoting African women and their creativeness, while also questioning western liberal feminism and its usefulness in the context of the lived realities and needs of African women. In many ways, Acaye frames a new form of female empowerment that puts en vironmental consciousness, collaboration and creativity at its centre.

Her installation work employs hand stitching, appending, knotting and weaving with natural fibre. These are all tasks Acaye watched her mother employ in her work - from embroidery, to needle work to hand stitching garments. She grew up at a time when the landscape of Kampala was fast changing from lush and green into a concrete land. Earth-consciousness is at the core of Acaye’s work, especially with regards to how the land can continue to feed and sustain a populous, both holistically and practically.

Acaye Kerunen’s intricate fibre installations champion the important work of Uganda’s local craftswomen. The pieces are all handmade, created through processes of stitching, appending, knotting and weaving with natural fibre. This manual practice comes from a form of inherited knowledge, employing tasks she watched her mother complete growing up in Kampala to artistic ends. Her work repositions traditional craftwork, opening dialogues surrounding the creative modalities given primacy by the western art canon.

In 2018, Acaye installed an interactive installation titled Kendu, a womblike structure made from locally sour ced barkcloth at the Nyege Nyege Ugandan culture and music festival. The installation prompted people to reflect on their relationship to regeneration and origin whilst being nurtured with locally sourced refresh ments prepared by the artist.

More recently, in 2021, Acaye participated in a self-led online Dance fellowship with the Saisan Foundation of Japan. Under a curatorial fellowship with New Castle University, Acaye also debuted her first solo exhibition Iwang Sawa at the Afriart gallery in Kampala to much acclaim and in collaboration with 32 Degrees East Ugandan Arts Trust, which focused on reinstalling artisan craft made by women of the local and regional Ugandan communities as contemporary art.

Acaye Kerunen and her fellow exhibitor Collin Sekajugo received the jury’s special mention award at the 59th Venice Biennale 2022 for works presented at the inaugural Uganda National Pavilion, ..”in acknowledgement of their vision, ambition and commitment to art and working in their country. Acaye Kerunen in her choice of sculptural materials like bark-clothed raffia illustrates sustainability as a practice and not just a policy or concept.”

Says Acaye; “Lit by the spirit of community. The communities of women grouped around wetlands in dif ferent regions of Uganda and followed through generations and generations of an observed culture of tile making by other women. I come from many women in that sense. The patterns, the colours, the ways of enriching the natural fibers and how to create the matrixes that are within the work and the patterns that have been passed down… all of those have been here long, long before us. I simply come into this place to refocus attention on this very rich mode of storytelling and I do that because I am tired of seeing the usual crafts, which were tainted by colonialism and the patriarchal notion that subjects the artisanship of women to functionality. Do you want to make this? Make a mat for the home. Make a basket to store food. Make a fishing basket. Mould a granary, thatch a roof to store food…”

ACAYE KERUNEN Ouganda, 2021, Mixed Media, 155 cm

Photo courtesy: © Acaye Kerunen Studio

ACAYE KERUNEN

Kakare, 2021, Mixed Media, 370 cm H x 860 cm W x 50 cm D

Photo courtesy: © Acaye Kerunen Studio

Left page top, this page: Acaye Kerunen preparing works for the „Radiance - They Dream in Time“ exhibition during a workshop and performance at UNCC, Kampala, 2022

MAXIMILIAN PRÜFER

at KIAF ART, Seoul

Maximilian Prüfer’s practice predominantly involves the exploration of natural processes and their transfe rence to the visual image, mainly involving his unique representation technique - Naturantypie. Particularly for the works presented at Kiaf, Seoul, Prüfer focuses directly on the behavioural patterns of snails and the collective movements of ants but also utilises the traces of raindrops to create highly aesthetic images that are bound to nature.

KIAF ART Seoul

2nd – 5th September 2022

O-Won Buildnig 9Fl., Kwanhun-dong, Jongro-gu, Seoul, South Korea

MAXIMILIAN PRÜFER

Snailpicture 14-05-22, 2022, DW Paper, American walnut, Artglas, 146,6 cm x 145,6 cm

Photo courtesy by the Artist

MAXIMILIAN PRÜFER

Rainpicture Sahara 15-03-22 (Detail), 2022, Hadern Paper, American walnut, Artglas,

Photo courtesy by the Artist

MAXIMILIAN PRÜFER

Rainpicture Hadern walnut, Artglas,

Photo courtesy by the Artist

MAXIMILIAN PRÜFER

02_Snailpicture Moon1 14-05-22 (Detail), DW Paper, American walnut, Artglas,

Photo

ALEXANDER BASIL

at ARTISSIMA 2022

For Artissima 2022, Galerie Kandlhofer is pleased to present new works by Alexander Basil. The works on paper, which the artist draws parallel to the paintings, have an experimental character and show signs of use from the working process. Similar to earlier paintings, the artist depicts intimate scenes. However, the direction has shifted towards a somewhat more surreal, humorous arrangment of figures in moments of everyday and domestic life - often in the bathroom or bedroom. These slightly comical and whimsical motifs offer many readings at a time when the body has become a complex political site centered around gender, identity and power.

Artissima 2022

4th – 6th November 2022

ALEXANDER BASIL

Untitled, 2022, pencil on paper, 21 cm x 15 cm

Photography by Roman Maerz, courtesy of the artist

ALINA KUNITSYNA

We are happy to present to you an extract of the newly issued Catalogue „Helium Ecstasy“ by Alina Kunitsyna. The Publication includes texts by Vitus Weh, Fahim Amir, Renate C.-Z.-Quehenberger as well as a broad image display of old and new works.

PAINTING AS A DRUG FOR EXPANDING CONSCIOUSNESS: A TRIP FROM TRANSCENDENCE TO IMMANENCE

“… is not the word pharmakon, which signifies what is used to color, the very same word that is appliedtothedrugsofsorcerersordoctors?Donotthosewhocastspellsresorttowaxfigurines for their curses?“1

As a preface, the above quotation from Derrida might be modified and used to characterize Alina Kunitsyna as a medium, a painter, an illusionist and a technician of legerdemain, a mistress of trompe l’oeil. Indeed, not only soothsayers resort to a pharmakon (Greek: “poison,“ “drug,“ ‚“medicine“) in casting their spells on wax figurines - painters do the same. The effect of their pictorial representations amounts to bewitchment. The term pharmakon has been used to refer to coloring substances, not the natural colors of things, but artificial coloring, chemical pigments that imitate what is inherently chromatic in things; but it has also been used to refer to painting itself.

The creative period documented in the present catalog reflects the artist‘s continuing search for an alter native truth hidden behind the external appearances of the objects she depicts. Her very real subjects are painted with virtuosity, whereby a glaze-over-grisaille technique is used - a technique that was used for the gray-shaded frescoes of the Renaissance and Baroque periods. Alina Kunitsyna, however, uses colored ink for her glazing. Her paintings consist of multiple overlays of semi-transparent layers of color, a technique that allows her to achieve an illusionistically realistic effect. Her ink-paintings, executed in this manner and with great precision, give the depicted objects the appearance of being real, although the paintings „really“ con vey a reality that is different from the one represented. To carry out this surrealist, psychedelic operation, the artist carefully selects in each case specific objects from her surroundings that are capable of embodying the imaginary and the immaterial. In addition to painting, Kunitsyna also employs various other artistic media, such as graphic reproduction, sculpture and animated film. The predominant theme within a philosophical, morphological system that she has rigorously defined is that of the outer shell or covering. She paints scenes and arrangements of fabrics, cloths and other objects that serve to cover or encase, such as boxes, shoes, but also socks; and here, different creative phases can be distinguished.

Her forms of expression, in cycles that vary, are sometimes influenced by the general quality of the times, by the phase that she happens to be experiencing in her personal life as well as by the feelings, thoughts and philosophical reflections that emerge as a result of what she is experiencing, and also by inspirations that come to her from literature. Her work aims at revealing invisible realms that are concealed by the world of material appearances, realms that have always been a subject of art.

At the same time, Kunitsyna’s work, with particular regard to her geometrical/topological forms of expressi on, very much reveals itself as well in the light of an analogy that can be made to what we might understand as the historical, anthropological evolution of the ways in which the antithesis to materialism is dealt with – an evolution that includes, in successive phases, the ethereal folds of transcendence (Latin transcendentia: „going beyond“), immanence (Latin immanēre: „to remain within,“ „to inhere“), painted nothingness and ni hilism, as well as psychopolitics, an evolution that I would like to sketch here briefly.

1 These words by the French philosopher Pierre-Maxime Schuhl (Platon et l’art de son temps) are quoted by Jacques Derrida in his essay “La Pharmacie de Platon“ in La Dissémination (first published in Tel Quel, issues 32 and 33, Paris, 1968).

Kunitsyna’s diploma project for the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (2007), which was inspired by the French psychiatrist Gaëtan de Clérambault, marks the beginning of her exploration of material subjects. Cléram bault‘s photographs of traditional Moroccan garments – enormous draped costumes with their folds and ty ing and twisting – became “prototypes“ (e.g. “conversation,“ 2006 or p. 134 “visus clérambault,“ 2010). Here, Clérambault‘s theme of the art of drapery was in fact only a follow-up to the extraordinary instruction in the techniques of Baroque painting that Kunitsyna received during her schooling in Minsk. This art form of depic ting objects demands, in addition to learning how to see, a confident brush stroke, the mastery of which can be achieved only through dedication, discipline and – to use the artist‘s favorite word –“equanimity“ (Ger man: Gleichmut). The practice of her a is based not only on the body-control exercises of the Russian ballet student that she once was, but also on the moral framework of her mental attitude. Even if it is outmoded to speak to such an artist of the virtues, say, of the philosopher Theano, Alina Kunitsyna‘s fundamental ethical, philosophical attitude is nevertheless an essential key to understanding her work. Following Plato‘s concep tion, she concerns herself with the “ideal material“ that resides in the realm of ideas, a realm to which ethics and aesthetics are also indigenous, these in their turn being able to be cognitively grasped only by feeling and with the help of geometry. And as for geometry, it was also in the geometrical style (Latin more geometrico) that Baruch de Spinoza, inspired by René Descartes, conceived a system of ethics for his pantheistic universe. It is also quite natural, therefore, that she has shown interest in the Russian philosopher and theologian Pavel Florensky, who, in a theory on methods of religious art, explicates the meaning of the iconostasis. According to Florensky, an icon, which coincides in broad terms with a mental picture, is a window opening onto meta physical experience. In the Orthodox Church, the iconostasis2 is the partition that separates the sanctuary from the nave of the church and as such is the membrane separating the worldly from the celestial. Whereas Florensky, in 1922, applied himself to describing the gold of the icons, shortly afterwards – during the „wire less hype“ set in motion by Nikola Tesla - André Breton wrote, „… the gold I seek is in the air?“3 As the ether came to be utilized for radio transmission, sacred, transcendental space became worldly – and with time, a corporatist/military battle zone.

Compelled by a need to discover, by artistic means, where transcendence might reside, Alina Kunitsyna pro bes the function of paintings as surfaces for reflection, a function similar to that of the iconostasis. What her paintings show is of a material nature while at the same time being windows that open onto a spiritual reality.

The painted outer shell or covering is, in biological terms, a membrane; or it is a gown, a kind of second skin that isolates the body from the outer world. Thus, time and again the artist seeks to represent two worlds or two conditions that separate two different realities. As a result, the dialectical Vedanta concept of maya (Sanskrit māyā: “illusion“ or “magic“) is brought to bear in Alina Kunitsyna’s art, a concept according to which true cognizance is only possible once one has managed to go beyond this duality.

In Kunitsyna’s paintings, color, the magic power of pharmakeia, produces its full effect and leads us into a realm hidden behind the veils of reality.

Renate C.-Z.- Quehenberger: Painting as a drug for expanding consciousness: A Trip from Transcendence to immanence. Published in: Alina Kunitsyna & Galerie Kandlhofer. Helium Ectsasy. Samson Druck 2022. S. 119 - 120.

2 Pavel Florensky, Iconostasis, trans. Donald Sheehan and Olga Andrejev (Yonkers, New York: SVS Press, 1996).

3 André Breton: „Introduction to the Discourse on the Paucity of Reality“ (1924), trans. Richard Sieburth and Jennifer Gordon, October vol. 69 (MIT Press, Summer 1994): 133-144.

HERMANN NITSCH

The 6-Day-Play, 2nd version

Performance of the 1st and 2nd day* From sunrise on july 30 to sunrise on august 1, 2022

24 years after the first realization of the 6-Day-Play (1998), the total work of art in Prinzendorf is to be con densed again in 2022 into a concentrated interplay of all its components.

Hermann Nitsch’s idea for a six-day and six-night action work dates back to 1957. Influenced by the Gesamt kunstwerk efforts of Richard Wagner and Alexander Scriabin, Hermann Nitsch who at that time worked intensively with the medium of literature, conceived his synaesthetically oriented action theatre, exhilarating all five senses: The Orgies Mysteries Theatre.

The length is analogous to the history of creation and is understood as an extension of all monumental works of art. All actions of the O.M. Theatre performed since then, i.e. since the early sixties, must be understood as partial realizations of the 6-Day-play.

The Orgien Mysterien Theater is an artistic endeavour. In addition to the visual idea of form, music plays an essential role. The basic concept of the play is based on a symphonic idea. The scene of the action is the castle in Prinzendorf with all its rooms and the surrounding landscape of the Lower Austrian Weinviertel.

Atelier Hermann Nitsch Schlossstraße 1, 2185 Prinzendorf, Autria www.nitsch.org

© Hermann Nitsch

Photo by Archive Cibulka-Frey; Daniel Feyerl

photography by Manuel Carreon Lopez

HERMANN NITSCH 10TH – JUL.

Hermann Nitsch (* 1938 in Vienna, † 2022) is regarded as the decisive founder of Viennese Actionism. As an action artist, painter, composer and stage designer, he is one of the most versatile contem porary artists. His Gesamtkunstwerk, the Theater of Orgies and Mysteries, encompasses the broad spectrum of his art by appealing to all five senses.

Beginning in 1960, the artist‘s first painting actions took place, which already sought to realize the idea of a theater of orgies and mysteries. The actions, which revolved around the intense sensory experience of various substances and liquids, became increasingly provocative in the following years. After scream and noise actions conceived as abreaction plays, Nitsch undertook the dismember ment of lambs, which led to further actions involving meat. After the theater was a resounding success in the U.S. and Germany in the late 1960s, Nitsch performed numerous actions in European and North American cities in the 1970s. In 1971, Nitsch was able to purchase Prinzendorf Castle in Lower Austria from the Catholic Church. The purchase, enabled him to now realize his musical ideas for theater in large-scaleaction performances. Noise orchestras, screaming choirs and electronically amplified instruments played a role.

Highlights of Hermann Nitsch‘s projects are the three-day theater piece of 1984 in Prinzendorf or the cycle of Schüttbilder created in 1987 in the Vienna Secession. In addition, in 1998 the realization of his Orgies MysteryTheater took place in the form of a 6-day play. 24 years after the original rea lization, this summer the Gesamtkunstwerk will be performed again as a concentrated version in a performance of the 1st and 2nd day. The performance will take place on July 30 and 31. The setting for the action is the castle complex in Prinzendorf with all its rooms as well as the surrounding land scape of the Lower Austrian Weinviertel.

Since the 1990s, Nitsch‘s art has been increasingly honored in a series of exhibitions, often accompa nied by performative actions by the artist. Of particular importance are the two major retrospecti ves at the Essl Collection (2003) and the Gropius Bau Berlin (2007), as well as the tribute to Nitsch through an exhibition at the Albertina in Vienna (2019).

Hermann Nitsch lived and worked at Prinzendorf an der Zaya Castle, Lower Austria, and in Asolo, Italy. His works are exhibited in the two Nitsch Museums in Mistelbach and Naples as well as in the Nitsch Foundation in Vienna and in renowned international museums and galleries.

The artist‘s credo was “my work should be a school of life, perception and sensation and should be experienced with all five senses“1. In this sense, the exhibition at Galerie Kandlhofer is dedicated to the presentation of diverse works from different creative phases, which invite the viewer to expe rience his art with all the senses by incorporating interactive methods. The exhibited works include works from the Bayreuth Valkyrie, New and Historical Works (1960 - 2022), Graphic Works, as well as the installation of a synesthesia room that encourages a sensory experience.

Universal artist Hermann Nitsch was invited by the Bayreuth Festival to provide scenic accompani ment for a concert version of Richard Wagner‘s „Die Walküre“ in the summer of 2021. For all three acts, the artist conceived an extensive painting campaign, which was transformed into bright colors scene by scene with the help of ten painting assistants during the score. Over 1000 liters of paint were spilled per performance. The resulting floor and wall paintings are considered the basis for the overall installation.

1 Hermann Nitsch, cited after Nitsch Museum: Sinne und Sein Retrospektive, Nitsch Museum, 2013 - 2014

INSTALLATION VIEW II, HERMANN NITSCH, 2022

© Manuel Carreon Lopez

One of the works created in Bayreuth, in impressive dimensions (5x5m), forms the centerpiece of the exhibition at Galerie Kandlhofer. The work is framed by a number of gold-embroidered shirts that transform the painting into an installation. In addition to the large-scale Schüttbild, other works from 2000 - 2020 consist of an extensive color palette of bright tones, with intense clusters and relief-like haptics. Just as Nitsch aspired to a music of the spheres in his music, he clustered the light of colors in his painting.

A special feature of the exhibition is the synesthesia room (audiovisual design: Frank Gassner), which is presented for the first time in a Viennese gallery. The concept of synesthesia has inspired Nitsch again and again. He combined colors and sounds, painting and literature, music and architecture, movement and stillness, which can be experienced in the installation of the synesthesia room at Galerie Kandlhofer. The installation invites you to surrender to the play of colors in the pictures, enve loped by the music. The monotype tonal work on display maintains the visual simultaneity of the four projectors experienced in the video room through their packaging and distills meaning and pictorial references from it once again.

The drawings and prints are also inseparably connected to the work as a whole and are immediate parts of the work. Hermann Nitsch has been working in the field of printmaking since the 1980s and has produced an extensive oeuvre. The basis of the prints is the architectural drawing, it is the start ing point and motif for the majority of the edited graphics. Since 1991 Hermann Nitsch worked toge ther with Kurt Zein. This period is characterized by the impressive expansion of printing possibilities, which of course had a serious impact on the results, which were produced in an elaborate process of several editing steps. For example, printing was done on originals, on handmade paper, on sheets that were individually covered with blood or painted in an actionistic way; the colors were changed sheet by sheet in the printing process, always precisely matched, several plates were printed on top of each other in complicated procedures. The most recent monumental work in the field of graphic art is the large-format, Hebrew-German art book LEVITIKUS, which Hermann Nitsch published to gether with the publisher Har-El in an edition of 16. It refers to the third book of Moses, which reports on the sacrificial rites in the temple of Jerusalem. The work is accompanied by twelve terragraphs, silkscreen prints with sand, whose material surface structure approximates the texture of the pouring pictures.

„paint is poured and splashed onto a surface and then smeared, pulpy color mass is smeared upon the picture. the painting process becomes a real happening. theatre occurs on the perspective plane.

I always say that the painting of the O.M. theatre is the visual grammar of my theatre on such a surface. the intrinsic action, the intrinsic action theatre leaves the places of refuge of the painting itself and goes beyond space to total reality.“ hermann nitsch

HERMANN NITSCH Schüttbild, 2000, Acryl auf Jute, 190 cm x 290 cm, © Manuel Carreon Lopez

HERMANN NITSCH

Reliktbild mit Applikationen, 2001, Blood, Bandaid, Chalk on Cotton Canvas, 138 cm x 295 cm, © Manuel Carreon Lopez

One Day When I Was Lost

curated by KJ Freeman

Galerie Kandlhofer invited KJ Freeman to curate an exhibition for this year‘s edition of Curated by. The exhibition will show works by Nathanial Oliver, Calli Roche, Harry Gould Harvey, Catalina Ouyang. KJ Freeman (b. 1992) is an artist and curator who was born and raised in New York City. KJ star ted HOUSING gallery in 2017 to provide a space for black and brown artists, especially those who have been historically excluded from the art world. KJ tackles identity formation and deconstructs normative structures through her curatorial practice. In 2021, KJ recieved the Armory’s Gramercy International Prize for experimental New York based galleries. KJ has also spoken at the LISTE art fair and has been a fellow in the New Museum Seminars. SEPT. 9TH OCT.

KELET

This year’s theme of the annual curated by Festival is dominated by the traumatic geopolitical events that currently overshadow all art and culture talk, namely the Ukraine war. Impulsgeber Dieter Roelstraete has suggested calling this overarching thematic framework “Kelet”, which is Hungarian for “East”- the opposite of “Nyugat”, the title of an influential avant-garde journal published in Budapest in the early years of the 20th century.

Sometime in the hopeful early years of the 20th century, a coterie of Hungarian artists, intellectuals and literati got together in Budapest, then still the twin capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, to found the avant-garde journal Nyugat. Among its founders and long-term contributors were such literary luminaries as Endre Ady, Attila Jozsef and Sandor Marai, as well as a little-known graphic artist named Mihaly Biro (1886-1948). Although Biro would go on to establish a reputation as the premier propagandist of his generation starting in the immediate postwar era, it is a cover design conceived for Nyugat in 1911 – that is to say, three years before the beginning of the end of the world as Mitteleuropa knew it – that may be his finest work: in it, a muscular naked man is shown from the back, legs striding, and arms spread wide to greet the glory of an enormous setting sun that is one-third obscured by receding clouds. One can tell this is a setting, not a rising sun, because of the lettering crowning its curve: “Nyugat” means “west” in Hungarian. Nyugat was founded at a time when the world’s undisputed art capitals were western metropolises like Paris and Munich (the rise of New York even further to the west was then still many decades in the making); artists and wri ters starved for avant-garde action in the eastern backwaters of the Dual Monarchy or neighboring czarist Russia were right, of course, to always turn west for glimpses of the future. The “west”, in their minds, equaled freedom, opportunity, progress – much like it sometimes seems to continue to do today. And its opposite, the putative “east” from which so many of these restless, aching artists hailed, stood for backwardness, bigotry, oppression, and a fatalistic sense of incorrigibility – much like it sometimes seems to continue to do today. But isn’t the east the land of the morning sun? Does not all light originate in the east, the traditional fount of wisdom? Indeed, what good is the worship of a setting sun? Isn’t the west where the world goes to sleep – that is to say, comes to an end?

The complex semantic tangle of east versus west (and evidently always also that of north versus south) has recently been thrown in renewed stark relief, of course, by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a geopolitical shockwave on a scale comparable to (if not greater than) that of 9/11 – another his torical caesura of recent vintage that has often been theorized as a function of atavistic east/west and north/south divides. Indeed, Biro’s image painfully rehearses the movement currently domina ting headlines around the world: the massive westward trek of millions of Ukrainians and residents of Ukraine escaping Russia’s senseless campaign of mass destruction in their homeland, seeking safety and security in a west that may therefore once again feel vindicated as the putative home of reason. (I am writing all of this down on 31 March 2022; on this day, according to the United Nations, the number of refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine has passed the four-million mark.) The east, as embodied by Putin and his Kremlin cronies, has once again come to symbolize backwardness, demo cratic deficit and despotism, lethal reaction, superstition. And within Ukraine itself, millions of people have left behind their homes in Donetsk, Kharkiv and Kyiv for the relative security (again, at the time of writing) of Lviv, the cultural capital of western Ukraine – a city whose occidental location has long marked it as a natural gateway to the enlightened world we continue to identify as quintessentially

In adopting the title “Kelet” (“east”) as the obverse of “Nyugat” (“west”), I invite the participating cu rators and galleries of Curated by to turn their gaze eastward at a moment when artists from Bela rus, Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slova kia, Ukraine and other nations may need it most – a time when the west’s inherent “orientalism” and resurgent “orientalizing” of Europe’s others must be challenged and held in check.1 (The participating galleries may either invite “their” guest 1 curators to “look east”, or instead opt to invite curators hailing from said “east”.) My hope is that this curatorial framework will result in a complex panoramic picture of “our” east or “Kelet” – from the near east of Bratislava to the far east of Khabarovsk – as an imaginary land bathed in the sun of artistic riches and renewal. Just don’t call it Eurasia.

1 Hungary is a particularly interesting case in point here, as Viktor Orban is under increasing pressure to distance himself from a Kremlin he had long been looking at as an alternative pathway out of the perceived paralysis of the western liberal order. It is significant, in this regard, that I am using the Hungarian word for “east” as the title of my framework. In fact, I first encountered Mihaly Biro’s design for the cover of Nyugat during a chance visit to the Museum of Applied Arts in Budapest; Biro’s image has been haunting me ever since, and I am hoping to be able to loan this work from said museum to be exhibited in Vienna in the context of Curated by. I likewise propose to commission a design very much like Biro’s, but sporting the word “Kelet”instead, to function as the project’s overarching campaign image.

Dieter Roelstraete, Chicago – March 2022

CATALINA OUYANG

risk assessment (What left what buried what tried to close), 2021 wood, found chair, discarded security camera, paper pulp, plaster, beeswax, oil paint, epoxy clay, steel, oyster shells, horse hair, 104 x 66 x 53 cm

ALEXANDER BASIL 11TH – NOV. 12TH

Alexander Basil (b.1997, Arkhangelsk, Russia) currently lives and works between Düsseldorf and Vien na. Basil has studied at The Kunstakademie, Düsseldorf and The Academy of Fine Art, Vienna under Professors Elizabeth Peyton, Daniel Richter, Kirsi Mikkola and Tomma Abts.

With a prodigious attention to drawing as the basis of his practice, Basil’s compositions are construc ted from exaggerated flat planes infused with heightened details of textiles, anatomical elements such as bruises, body hair and facial features, alongside various thematic objects. The concept of seeing and to be seen is a frequent thematic element of many of Basil’s paintings. Predominantly focussing on self portraiture within various iterations of the domestic space, his compositions regu larly include objects such as mirrors, water, glasses, mobile phones; all of which hold both literal and figurative connotations of reflections both of our physical selves and our perceived identity. There is a vulnerability within this, as Basil’s portrayal of his figures conveys a heightened sense of exposure, devoid of flattery and in an almost exaggerated unidealistic manner. Beyond this, the objects and mis-en-scene depicted in the compositions explore the banality of domestic environments, laptops, computer games, energy drinks and laundry equipment create the antithesis of a mythologized ar tistic studio context and instead transcend into an at times claustrophobic comment on the attach ment to ones environment.

For these introspective compositions, Basil oftentimes employs the use of multiple self-portraits into a variety of narrative characters and reflections on the self. The figures often interact with one anot her creating a dissected depiction of the interior psychology that explores introspection in a layered manner through both its pleasures and isolation.

Basil’s previous solo exhibitions include: ‘Entourage’, Galerie Robert Grunenberg, Berlin, 2022; ‘Claus trophobia’, Galerie Nagel Draxler, Berlin, 2021; ‘Alexander Basil’, Galerie Kandlhofer, Vienna, 2021; ‘Alexander Basil’, curated by Kirsi Mikkola, Salon Dahlmann | Miettinen Collection, Berlin, 2020.

He has also exhibited in group exhibitions including: ‘The Class of Kirsi Mikkola’, Galerie Nagel Draxler, 2021; ‘Diskrete Simulation’, curated by Jakob Lena Knebl, Galerie Crone, Vienna, 2020; ‘Touch Me: Nudes from the Miettinen Collection’, Salon Dahlmann, Berlin, 2020; ‘Trust. Pictures of the class of Tomma Abts’, KIT- Art in the Tunnel, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, 2017.

Basil was the 2020 recipient of The Art Association for the Rhineland and Westphalia/ The Founda tion for Art and Culture of the Stadtsparkasse Düsseldorf travel grant.

ALEXANDER BASIL

Untitled, on canvas,

© Manuel Carreon Lopez

Le Bain of Love

The bath of love. All beings, human as non-human, but also plants or minerals, all created objects, as well as virtual beings and all thoughts or figurations, do reveal themselves, and truly testify to their state, in and through their relationship to others.

A relationship that may be random too, when not impermanent at times, but these existences it creates are never totally detached, marginal or alien: they always remain the product of a differen tial, a reminiscence that haunts them. This is why they cannot be denounced or stigmatised without being negated or harmed even.

As all these beings produce signs and also engender multiplicities of forms with which they take their bent, thus composing the score of their presence in order to enter into communion with each other. The Bath of love that brings them together is then as much a state of affairs as an amniotic baptism in which affinities melt and grow before being abandoned, when they do not remember, invent and confront each other in order to forget all about it later. Never can they really be framed.

Certainly, this bath remains lustral by nature: it is the ritual of purification and renewal. But, above all, its eternal return invites us to: „… put ourselves back into the duration in order to recapture reality in the mobility that is its essence.“ (H. Bergson). In this, all the ambiguity of the correspondences that he brings into the world becomes apparent. Thus, there is no despicable or even hateful form, but a continuum where the plasticity of beings inspires meditation and mediation. It calls too for the recognition of the infinity of our imaginations caught up in the net of all the others that surround, inhabit, and confuse us. Thus, can we ever get out of the Bath...?

Ralf Marsault

Alina Kunitsyna (b.1981 in Minsk, Belarus) lives and works in Vienna and Damtschach, Austria. She studied at Lycee of Art, Minsk and the University of Art and Design, Linz, graduating from the Aca demy of Fine Arts, Vienna in 2007. During her time in Minsk, Kunitsyna studied the still lives of the Renaissance period, both the theoretical and practical extensively. These artworks contained preci ous objects like orthodox garments, ancient decanters or featured vanitas motifs. The imitation of this époque made an experience that laid the foundation for her practice. Today Kunitsyna seeks ins piration in current pop culture, everyday life and art history combining these elements in the context of capricious jokes and allegories that capture the bewilderment of contemporary life. Kunitsyna‘s recent solo exhibitions include: ‚Helium Ecstasy‘, Galerie Kandlhofer, Vienna, 2019; ‚Flux-Time‘, Mu seum moderner Kunst Kärnten, 2018; ‚In The Fold‘, Galerie Kandlhofer, Vienna, 2017. Recent group show include: Coppla Coronale, Galerie Vorspann, Bad Eisenkappel, 2020; ‚There is no clock in the forest‘, Galerie Schloss Damtschach, Damtschach, 2019; ‚Shifts in Time‘, Over the Influence, Los Angeles, 2019; ‚2. Törn‘, Galerie 3, Velden am Wörthersee, 2019; ‚Women In Print‘, Ga leriekrems, Krems, 2019; ‚1. Törn‘, Galerie 3, Velden am Wörthersee, 2019. Kunitsyna has received the following awards: ArtPrize Volksbank, Klagenfurt, 2011; Prize for Visual arts of State, Carinthia, 2009 and the BACA Artprize, 2005. Her work can be found in significant collections such as: Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Artothek des Bundes Wien, Museum Moder ner Kunst Kärnten and Bank Austria Kunstsammlung.

ALINA KUNITSYNA

Sketch for Human Reset, 2022, ink on paper, 76 x 56 cm

Galerie Kandlhofer is pleased to introduce “Focus On“ a new section to the gallery program, providing a platform for different artistic positions. The section will run concurrently with the gallery’s main exhibition program in the project room and focus on bringing a diverse range of artistic aesthetics and voices to the gallery to form a broader cultural and aesthetic dialogue.

photography by Manuel Carreon Lopez

SARAH BECHTER 9TH OCT. 8TH MANDL 11TH NOV.

THÉO VIARDIN 17TH JAN.

The conditions and ambivalences of artistic production lie at the center of Sarah Bechter‘s practice. Blurring the lines between the private and the public, work and leisure, surface and line, Bechter‘s canvases exist as individual subjects, rather than surfaces of projection, and seem entangled in a vivid debate among themselves. The artist uses a wide range of techniques and references to interrogate the validity of the images she creates, and of painting itself. Furthermore, Bechter invites the viewer to a game of hide-and-seek by often only hinting at protagonists and objects, infusing her works with a mysterious, dreamy atmosphere.

Sarah Bechter (*1989) lives and works in Vienna. She studied painting at the University of Applied Arts Vienna and has participated in exhibitions at Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen (CH); Intersticio Madrid (ESP); Haus Wien (AT); Exile Gallery (Vienna); tart/Galerie Thoman, Vienna (solo); Pilot Vienna (solo); Kunstverein Schattendorf; eastcontemporary (It/Fr); Not Cancelled Salon (online exhibi tion); Krinzinger Projekte (Vienna); Kunstverein Bludenz (AT); Haus Wittgenstein (Vienna); Magyar Mühely Galeria (Budapest); summer art picnic, sort (Vienna); and Spazi Aperti (Rome.), among others. Her works are represented in several public collections such as Artothekt des Bundes,Bel vedere 21; City of Vienna, Wien Museum; State of Vorarlberg, Hypo Landesbank, Illwerke AG.

SARAH BECHTER

Untitled (somebody with an artichoke), 2021, Oil on canvas, 170 x 150 cm

© Courtesy of the artist

DREAM, BABY DREAM

In her colourful material collages, pictures, prints and sculptures, Nana Mandl develops pos sible visual implementations of today‘s media challenges and excessive demands. Her haptic collages combine elements of painting, embroidery and drawing with forms of communicativerepresentative spheres of advertising, fashion, pop culture and social media.

The publication also takes a playful approach to superficiality and materiality, which often do minates meaning these days. Her multi-layered works find space in an extensive catalogue, which makes precisely this overlapping of image worlds clear on 52 varied pages.

The individual prints in the publication show details of works, as well as exhibition views from recent years and are printed on differently structured paper. In addition, the sheets of paper are cut in different ways, creating an exciting, multi-layered space that arouses curiosity about the pages that lie ahead.

An additional 12 sheets of tracing paper offer space for six selected poems by the artist. The catalogue is not only intended to reflect a visual world, but above all to provide an incentive to discover new aspects and connections in an environment flooded with images.

Théo Viardin (Paris, France, 1992) is a French artist based in Paris. He studied Graphic Design in Nantes and Tolouse and co-founded Embuscade, a visual creation studio in 2015.

Having started his painting practice in recent years, Viardin works mainly with oil paint to de velop a narrative-based approach in investigating human representation. Through the repeti tion of characters, colours, attitudes and objects, Viardin progressively represents a distant world which possess its own culture and canonical figures. Each painting is a scene unveiling a part of a distant story, or a piece of an incomplete puzzle.

Viardin’s solo exhibitions include: Distant Echoes. Number Three Spitalfields, 2021, London (UK); Toute présence se mêle avec les pierres. L21 Gallery, 2021, Palma de Mallorca (ES). VIARDIN

THÉO VIRADIN

Recherche pour une vanité, 2022, Acrylic and pigment on canvas, 89 x 116 cm, Courtesy of the artist and L21 Gallery © Courtey of the Artist

CREDITS

Cover

Alina Kunitsyna, Don‘t disturb my circles, 2022, 60 x 45 cm, 24x 18 inches, ink on paper © Courtesy of the Artist

Page 2

Alina Kunitsyna, Studio View, 2022, © Thomas Maier

Page 5

Acaye Kerunen, Ouganda, 2021, Mixed Media, 155 cm H x 115 cm W, Photo courtesy: © Acaye Kerunen Studio

Page 6

Acaye Kerunen preparing works for the Radiance – They Dream in Time exhibition during a workshop and performance at UNCC, Kampala, 2022 © Acaye Kerunen Studio

Acaye Kerunen, Kakare, 2021, Mixed media, 370 cm H x 860 cm W x 50 cm D (145 5/8“ H x 338 1/2“ W x 19 3/4“ D inches). Photo courtesy: © Acaye Kerunen Studio

Page 7

Acaye Kerunen preparing works for the Radiance – They Dream in Time exhibition during a workshop and performance at UNCC, Kampala, 2022 © Acaye Kerunen Studio

Page 8

Maximilian Prüfer, Snailpicture 14-05-22, 2022, DW Paper, American walnut, Artglas, 146,6 x 145,6 cm, 58,22 x 82,12 inch (2022_06_002) © Courtesy of the Artist

Page 9

Maximilian Prüfer, Rainpicture Sahara 15-03-22, 2022, Hadern Paper, American walnut, Artglas, 140 x 200,4 cm, 58,22 x 82,12 inch (2022_04_001) © Courtesy of the Artist

Page 10

Maximilian Prüfer, Rainpicture 31-03-22, 2022, Hadern Paper, American walnut, Artglas, 56 x 76 cm, 29,92 x 22,04 inch (2022_08_001) © Courtesy of the Artist

Page 11

Maximilian Prüfer, 02_Snailpicture_Moon1_14-05-22, 2022, DW Paper, American walnut, Artglas, 56 x 76 cm, 29,92 x 22,04 inch (2022_07_002) © Courtesy of the Artist

Page 12

Alexander Basil, Untitled, 2022, pencil on paper, 9 x 9 cm. Photography by Roman Maerz © Courtesy ofthe Artist

Page 13

Alexander Basil, Untitled, 2022, pencil on paper, 21 x 15 cm. Photography by Roman Maerz © Courtesy of the Artist

Page 17

Alina Kunitsyna, Helium Ecstasy, Hardcover, Publisher: Alina Kunitsyna & Galerie Kandlhofer

Dimensions: 34 x 24, published by Samson Druck , printed in Austria, Authors: Vitus Weh, Fahim Amir, Renate C.-Z.-Quehenberger, ISBN: 978-3-200-08194-9, 2022 © Alina Kunitsyna & Manuel Carreon Lopez

CONTACT

Galerie Kandlhofer Brucknerstrasse 4, 1040 Vienna, Autria

info@kandlhofer.com +43 1 503 1167

Page 19

Hermann Nitsch, 6-Day Play © Hermann Nitsch / Photos by Archiv Cibulka-Frey; Daniel Feyerl

Page 23

Installation View, Hermann Nitsch, 2022 © Manuel Carreon Lopez

Page 25

Hermann Nitsch, Schüttbild, 2000, Acryl auf Jute, 190 x 290 cm, 74 3/4 x 114 1/8 in (SO_1_00A) © Manuel Carreon Lopez

Hermann Nitsch, Reliktbild mit Applikationen, 2001,Blood, Plaster, Crayon on Cotton, 38 x 298 cm, 54 3/8 x 117 3/8 in, (R_Linda_01)

© Manuel Carreon Lopez

Page 26

Portrait of KJ Freeman © courtesy of the curator

Page 29

Catalina Ouyang, risk assessment (What left what buried what tried to close), 2021 wood, found chair, discarded security camera, paper pulp, plaster, beeswax, oil paint, epoxy clay, steel, oyster shells, horse hair, 104 x 66 x 53 cm, 41” x 26” x 21” © Courtesy of Night Gallery

Page 31

Alexander Basil, Untitled, 2022, Oil on canvas, 155 x 125 cm, 61 1/8 x 49 1/4 in, © Manuel Carreon Lopez

Page 33

Alina Kunitsyna, Sketch for Human Reset, 2022, 76 x 56 cm, 29 x 22 inches, ink on paper © Courtesy of the Artist

Page 37

Sarah Bechter, Untitled (somebody with an artichoke), 170×150 cm, oil on canvas, 2021 © Courtesy of the Artist

Page 39

Nana Mandl, “dream baby, dream“, artist book, © Courtesy of the Artist

Page 41

Théo Viardin, Recherche pour une vanité, 2022, Acrylic and pigment on canvas, 116 x 89 cm, Courtesy of the artist and L21 Gallery © Courtesy of the Artist

Backcover

Alina Kunitsyna, Don‘t disturb my circles, 2022, 60 x 45 cm, 24 x 18 inches, ink on paper © Courtesy of the Artist