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Erwin Polanc, Oliver Klimpel — Evening Standards

Video

For his most recent project, Evening Standards, Erwin Polanc spent twelve weeks in London, where he approached various urban communities and their stories through portrait photography and the documentation of urban situations. In particular, Polanc sought to capture the specificity of this contemporary moment and its aesthetic and emotional sensations, namely the post-Brexit atmosphere, and to depict characters who either did not experience the optimism of the New Labour years, have left it behind or only know it from history books. On the streets of Bow, Mile End and Aldgate East, different rhythms and speeds of life come together, reflecting a conglomerate of start-ups, speculation and urban development as well as the diversity of the city itself.

The title of the project is taken from the London evening newspaper The Evening Standard, which was founded in 1827and renamed the London Evening Standard in 2009 following its takeover by Russian oligarch Alexander Yevgenyevich Lebedev, and has since been a free, advertising-funded vessel for big city gossip, business news and real estate ads.

In the context of the artist’s book, the title breaks down into its two components, as it poses the question of what norms and standards can be agreed upon in this digital melancholy, where only camera lenses and microchips capture times of waning light and information from a very specific London milieu. Polanc’s photographs show a meticulousness of imaging that thematizes seeing itself and its perception, while at the same time paying homage to London and its working-class districts that are in danger of disappearing.

Together with Oliver Klimpel, with whom he developed the artist book in close collaboration and who prepared a text using headlines from the London Evening Standard, Polanc will talk about the book’s creation in a presentation at HALLE FÜRKUNST Steiermark.

Artists

Participating artists

Erwin Polanc

(*1982 in Friesach, lives in Graz)

works as a freelance photographer and lecturer in photography and multimedia art at the Department of Art and Design at the Ortweinschule in Graz.

Exhibitions (selection): Galerie Schnitzler und Lindsberger, Graz (2022, 2021), Gottrekorder, Graz (2022, 2020), Akademie Graz (2021), <rotor>, Graz (2020), Raum für Fotografie, Klagenfurt (2020), La Strada, Graz (2020), FOTOHOF, Salzburg (2020), Galerie Marenzi, Leibnitz (2019), Kunsthaus, Graz (2018), steirischer Herbst, Graz (2017), Gallery of Photography, Dublin (2016), Forum Stadpark, Graz (2016), Österreichisches Kulturforum, Berlin (2016). 

Oliver Klimpel

(*1973 in Dresden, lives in Berlin)

curates, designs and writes. He explores narrative environments and politics of display in books or exhibitions. Since 2022 he has headed the Curatorial Workshop department at the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation. From 2008 till 2015 he was Professor for System-Design at the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig.

More contributions

STAGES — Hanna Besenhard 

Slide show

Hanna Besenhard_Starry Hours_,2025

The recurring format of STAGES is as radical as it is simple: young artists from Graz and Styria are offered a stage for the duration of an evening – or ocasionally longer. HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark… 

STAGES - Hanna Besenhard

Diedrich Diederichsen
Vortrag 

Video

On the basis of his contribution to the publication, conceived against the backdrop of Poledna’s film produced in Los Angeles in the summer of 2024 especially for the exhibition at HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark, Diederichsen will discuss and present Mathias Poledna’s artistic career with references to music and art history as well as pop culture.

Diedrich Diederichsen

Karel Císař
Lecture 

Video

In this lecture, Císař will explore Mathias Poledna’s career and artistic practice against the backdrop of the current exhibition, which can also be understood as a kind of retrospective. 

Karel Císař – Lecture

Mathias Poledna
Exhibition Tour 

Slide show

Mathias Poledna has created a complex, multi-layered body of work in which films, expansive installations and architectural interventions are in constant dialog with each other, where independent series of works, found objects and ephemeral materials all condense to form a singular artistic language. Central to his practice are questions of modernity, cultural memory and the visual imaginary in art and popular culture.

Ausstellungsrundgang Mathias Poledna

STAGES
Jakob Kolb aka On Bells

Video

The STAGES format is as radical as it is simple. HALLE FÜRKUNST Steiermark offers a platform for artists from the immediate vicinity for the duration of an evening. The exhibition hall is intended to… 

Stages Jakob Kolb