Future of Melancholia in Belgrade
Katharina Höglinger, Anna Schachinger
Video
The exhibition Future of Melancholia at the Gallery-Legacy of the Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade presents a selection of contemporary Austrian artists alongside works by Graz pioneer of surrealism Susanne Wenger. The exhibition explores melancholy, nostalgia and surreal inner worlds as forms of artistic expression and responds to contemporary emotional and political contexts. Wenger, known for her speculative and surreal melancholic works, including Traumgesichte (1943 and 44) and Icons of Great Sadness (1990s), depicts hybrid, dreamlike, ghostly beings. The contemporary artists – including Flora Hauser, Ernst Yohji Jaeger, Matthias Noggler, Maruša Sagadin, Klaus Schuster and Lisa Slawitz – deal with similar themes in various media.
Anna Schachinger draws on concepts such as care, motherhood, and spaces intended exclusively for women, and emphasizes the relevance of the diversity of female bodies and interdependent relationships with the environment and more-than-human beings. Her works incorporate various surfaces such as ceramics, velvet or used fabrics, and are often conceived as installations. She treats her painting practice as a stage that, emerging from a queer-feminist discourse, allows body fragments and color surfaces to merge with each other in such a way that perspective, space and time seem to dissolve, creating non-linear stories.
The works of Katharina Höglinger takes up everyday experiences. She captures fleeting thoughts and interests directly on canvas or paper. To depict the complexity and ambiguity of thoughts, she shows overlapping, intertwined figures. Höglinger’s works seem to have fallen out of time and convey a deep melancholy, revealing an introspective examination of the uncertainty of our present. Despite the surreal, sometimes gloomy figures, her images radiate lightness and the courage to embrace imperfection.
In a joint discussion with Sandro Droschl, Katharina Höglinger and Anna Schachinger, who are both part of Future of Melancholia at the Gallery-Legacy of Milica Zorić & Rodoljub Čolaković Gallery at MoCAB Belgrade, they will discuss their practices and their specific contexts in more detail. This will be accompanied by a virtual tour of the Belgrade exhibition, placing it in relation to the Graz edition.
Exhibition Page
Artists
Participating artists
Katharina Höglinger
Solo exhibitions (selection): SINK, Vienna (2023), Galerie Wonnerth Dejaco, Vienna (2022, 2020), Stanley’s Gallery, Los Angeles (2022), Kommod, Vienna (2021), EDITION: Verein für aktuelle Kunst und Kultur, Linz (2021), Galeria Quadrado Azul, Lisbon (2019), White Dwarf Projects, Vienna (2017), Degraw Social Club, New York (2017), Raumteiler, Vienna (2016).
Group exhibitions (selection): das weisse haus, Vienna (2024), Galerie Wonnerth Dejaco, Vienna (2024), Wien Museum musa (2023), Belvedere 21, Vienna (2023, 2019), Kunstverein Eisenstadt (2023), Zina Gallery, Cluj-Napoca, Romania (2023), Galerie Zimmermann Kratochwill, Graz (2022), Harkawik Gallery, New York (2022), Supermala, Madrid (2020), MAUVE, Vienna (2019, 2017), Royal Academy of Art, London (2019).
Anna Schachinger
Solo exhibitions (selection): Sophie Tappeiner, Vienna (2024, 2022, 2020), MQ Art Box, Vienna (2023), Encounter Contemporary, Lisbon (2023), Lumiar Cité, Lisbon (2022), ENCIMA by Galeria Madragoa, Lisbon (2019), Brennan & Griffin, New York (2018), Fourteen30 Contemporary, Portland (2018), Lulu, Mexico City (2017), fAN Kunstverein, Vienna (2016), Kunstfabrik Großsiegharts, Austria (2015), UBIK Space, Vienna (2015).
Group exhibitions (selection): Wien Museum musa, Vienna (2024), NEVVEN Gallery, Bologna (2024), Galeria Madragoa, Lisbon (2024), Museo National do Azulejo, Lisbon (2023), Salzburger Kunstverein (2023), Belvedere 21, Vienna (2022, 2021), Chris Sharp Gallery, Los Angeles (2022), Galeria Quadrum / Avenida da Índia Gallery, Lisbon (2021), Galerie Rolando Anselmi, Rome (2021), X Museum, Beijing (2021), Left Field Gallery, Los Osos Valley, California (2021), STANDARD (OSLO), Oslo (2021), Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2019), Fourteen30 Contemporary, Portland (2019), La Maison de Rendez-Vous, Brussels (2019).
More contributions
Kathy Rae Huffman
FROM CYBERFEMINISM
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In her research and in the volume Aus dem Blickfeld (Out of Sight), co-edited with Heimo Halbrainer, Karin Maria Schmidlechner demonstrates that the lived realities of Styrian women during the Nazi era and the postwar period were diverse and ambivalent. Hence, she broadens the scholarly discourse on their daily lives while simultaneously deconstructing common narratives such as that of the conformist woman or the so-called “rubble woman.”
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Àdùnní Olórìṣà
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Tobias Boos Exhibition Tour
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Exhibition Tour Diego Bianchi Exhibition Tour
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Ausstellungsrundgang Celina Eceiza Annemarie Arzberger
dreamed awake
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For HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark the artist has developed her first own performative presentation, with a setting for her puppets with three scenes set in an imaginary spaceship, an exhibition, and the spaces that the scenes depict: the Schlouflaboar, the Houloudecks, and the Space Grotto Disco. The piece is a combination of physical theater and puppetry, performed by the artist together with her sister Katharina Arzberger and accompanied by musical interludes arranged by Manuel Obriejtan.
Slide Show Annemarie Arzberger