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STAGES — Hanna Besenhard 

Slide show

Hanna Besenhard, long long weekend, 2025

Stage decks, sheep’s wool, hydrogen peroxide, Thassian marble, various dimensions

Courtesy: the artist

Hanna Besenhard, long long weekend (detail), 2025

Bühnenelemente, Schafwolle, Wasserstoffperoxid, Thassos Marmor, verschiedene Dimensionen

Courtesy: die Künstlerin

Hanna Besenhard, long long weekend (detail), 2025

Stage decks, sheep’s wool, hydrogen peroxide, Thassian marble, various dimensions

Courtesy: the artist

Hanna Besenhard, Starry Hours,2025

Video loop installation, billboard format

Courtesy: the artist

Hanna Besenhard, Starry Hours,2025

Video loop installation, billboard format

Courtesy: the artist

Hanna Besenhard, Starry Hours,2025

Video loop installation, billboard format

Courtesy: the artist

Hanna Besenhard, Millennial Nap, 2024

Videoloop, tilted projector

Courtesy: the artist

Hanna Besenhard, Millennial Nap, 2024

Videoloop, tilted projector

Courtesy: the artist

Hanna Besenhard, Millennial Nap, 2024

Videoloop, tilted projector

Courtesy: the artist

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 thus serves as a platform for up-coming artists from the immediate vicinity to make their work accessible to a wider audience.

Hanna Besenhard works with video, sound, sculpture, objects and documents as well as stamp cards or forged driver’s licenses, often combining several media. The focus is on time-based media apparatuses, their technological foundations and histories, as well as their representative and temporal dynamics. A recurring element in her work is the combination of classic organic materials such as marble, felt or animal skins with digital printing processes and video. She is not primarily concerned with the clash between these materials or with highlighting a contrast, but rather with condensing a larger narrative into a story. This is also Besenhard’s connection to the two exhibitions by Caroline Mesquita and Leon Höllhumer, which are currently on view at HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark.

For her interpretation of the STAGES format, Besenhard uses the title of the series as a starting point and develops an installation of stage elements that give space to existing works, while integrating a new video work. A single wedge of white Thassos marble tilts the stack of stage elements slightly upwards on one side. The concept of a stage and its distant history as a reference for time-based languages becomes an object. The tilted stack makes use of the nature of sequential media without a conventional temporal flow. The accompanying video work features two projectors, presented both as objects in themselves and as tools of representation. Together they form a rhythmic framework that arises from the transfer of analog derivatives to digital ones: an image of ab analogue projector is projected with a digital projector via a digital recording.

Artists

Participating artists

Hanna Besenhard

*1995 in Graz, lives in Vienna

Hanna Besenhard was born in Graz in 1995. After Ortweinschule, she studied media art and fine arts at the University of Art and Design Linz, the University of Applied Arts Vienna and the Athens School of Fine Arts. She has exhibited at Kunsthaus Weiz, Museo de Arte Nova Aveiro, Ars Electronica, Ennsmuseum and Kunstzelle Wien, among others.

Current works manifest themselves through multimedia and sculptural processes. Her artistic practice revolves around concepts of the future and media history and often function as translations between the volumetric and the flat. Temporal dynamics are questioned in their production and presentation.

More contributions

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