Exhibitions

on affairs
Noah Barker, Milena Büsch, Carolyn Lazard, Ghislaine Leung, Lorenza Longhi, Vera Lutz, Studio For Propositional Cinema, Sung Tieu
28.1.–30.4.2023

Exhibition

The present day and our media-based access to reality are determined by a myriad of digital and analogue linkages of text and image. The signs and symbols are stacked high in our shelves and smartphones, in our in-boxes, and in social media. Everything is mutually overlapping and layered. Of course, the system of art is also subject to all of this in certain fields, but by no means not fully so. The exhibition on affairs takes the act of immersion into this gigantic ocean of images and words and the salvaging of fragments and pieces from this ocean as a figure.

Online guide 

Views

on affairs,2023

Exhibition view

Photo: kun​st​-doku​men​ta​tion​.com

Lorenza Longhi, Untitled (Particuliere 505 Pavillion), 2021
(Detail)

Collages: plexiglass, aluminium, rivets (13 × 33 × 1.5 cm each)
installed on mobile pavilion: magnets plastic panels, magnets, ropes, cable ties, rivets (variable dimension)
Courtesy Weiss Falk, Basel & Zurich

Photo: kun​st​-doku​men​ta​tion​.com

Lorenza Longhi, Untitled (Particuliere 505 Pavillion), 2021
(Detail)

Collages: plexiglass, aluminium, rivets (13 × 33 × 1.5 cm each)
installed on mobile pavilion: magnets plastic panels, magnets, ropes, cable ties, rivets (variable dimension)
Courtesy Weiss Falk, Basel & Zurich

Photo: kun​st​-doku​men​ta​tion​.com

Vera Lutz, Verdunkelungssystem, 2023

Curtain rails, aluminium
376 x 749 x 2,5 cm
Courtesy the artist; FELIX GAUDLITZ, Vienna
Photo: kun​st​-doku​men​ta​tion​.com

Vera Lutz, Verdunkelungssystem, 2023

Curtain rails, aluminium
376 x 749 x 2,5 cm
Courtesy the artist; FELIX GAUDLITZ, Vienna

Photo: kun​st​-doku​men​ta​tion​.com

Vera Lutz, Verdunkelungssystem, 2023

Curtain rails, aluminium
376 x 749 x 2,5 cm
Courtesy the artist; FELIX GAUDLITZ, Vienna

Photo: kun​st​-doku​men​ta​tion​.com

Vera Lutz, Verdunkelungssystem, 2023

Curtain rails, aluminium
376 x 749 x 2,5 cm
Courtesy the artist; FELIX GAUDLITZ, Vienna

Photo: kun​st​-doku​men​ta​tion​.com

Carolyn Lazard, Red, 2021

Two-channel video installation
10:15 min.
Courtesy the artist; Maxwell Graham Gallery, New York

Photo: kun​st​-doku​men​ta​tion​.com

Carolyn Lazard, Red, 2021

Two-channel video installation
10:15 min.
Courtesy the artist; Maxwell Graham Gallery, New York

Photo: kun​st​-doku​men​ta​tion​.com

Carolyn Lazard, Red, 2021

Two-channel video installation
10:15 min.
Courtesy the artist; Maxwell Graham Gallery, New York

Photo: kun​st​-doku​men​ta​tion​.com

Sung Tieu, Top Wheel Sung Tieu Natal Chart, 12 Jul 1987, Sun 6:45am ICT Hai Duong, Vietnam, 20°56’N 106°20’E, Bottom Wheel ICA London Natal Chart, 9 Feb 1948, Mon 8:30pm GMT London, UK, 51°30’N 0°10’E, Placidus, 2022

Stainless steel, engraved stainless steel, screws
38 × 50 × 1 cm
Courtesy the artist; Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin

Photo: kun​st​-doku​men​ta​tion​.com

Sung Tieu, Top Wheel Sung Tieu Natal Chart, 12 Jul 1987, Sun 6:45am ICT Hai Duong, Vietnam, 20°56’N 106°20’E, Bottom Wheel ICA London Natal Chart, 9 Feb 1948, Mon 8:30pm GMT London, UK, 51°30’N 0°10’E, Placidus, 2022

Stainless steel, engraved stainless steel, screws
38 × 50 × 1 cm
Courtesy the artist; Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin

Photo: kun​st​-doku​men​ta​tion​.com

Sung Tieu, Top Wheel Sung Tieu Natal Chart, 12 Jul 1987, Sun 6:45am ICT Hai Duong, Vietnam, 20°56’N 106°20’E, Bottom Wheel ICA London Natal Chart, 9 Feb 1948, Mon 8:30pm GMT London, UK, 51°30’N 0°10’E, Placidus, 2022

Stainless steel, engraved stainless steel, screws
38 × 50 × 1 cm
Courtesy the artist; Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin

Photo: kun​st​-doku​men​ta​tion​.com

on affairs, 2023

Exhibition view

Photo: kun​st​-doku​men​ta​tion​.com

Milena Büsch, Auto Motor Sport, 2022

Oil on magazine pages, mounted on cardboard, frame of the artist
142,8 × 110,8 cm
Courtesy J. Patrick Collins; FELIX GAUDLITZ, Vienna

Photo: kun​st​-doku​men​ta​tion​.com

Milena Büsch, Adel aktuell, 2022

Oil on magazine page
28 × 22 cm
Courtesy FELIX GAUDLITZ, Vienna

Photo: kun​st​-doku​men​ta​tion​.com

Ghislaine Leung, Browns, 2021

Score: All available walls in brown to standard picture hanging height.
Edition 1 of 3+ 2 AP
Courtesy the artist; Maxwell Graham Gallery, New York

Photo: kun​st​-doku​men​ta​tion​.com

Ghislaine Leung, Fountains, 2021

Score: A fountain installed in the exhibition space to cancel sound.
Edition 1 of 3 + 2 AP
Courtesy the artist; Maxwell Graham Gallery, New York

Photo: kun​st​-doku​men​ta​tion​.com

Ghislaine Leung, Fountains, 2021

Score: A fountain installed in the exhibition space to cancel sound.
Edition 1 of 3 + 2 AP
Courtesy the artist; Maxwell Graham Gallery, New York

Photo: kun​st​-doku​men​ta​tion​.com

Studio for Propositional Cinema, Manual: The Camera of Disaster, 2022

Texts in 26 aluminium frames, mixed media
Each 51,2 × 51,2 cm
Edition of 3 + 1 AP (# 3/3)
Courtesy the artist; Tanya Leighton, Berlin/​Los Angeles

Photo: kun​st​-doku​men​ta​tion​.com

Studio for Propositional Cinema, Manual: The Camera of Disaster, 2022

Texts in 26 aluminium frames, mixed media
Each 51,2 × 51,2 cm
Edition of 3 + 1 AP (# 3/3)
Courtesy the artist; Tanya Leighton, Berlin/​Los Angeles

Photo: kun​st​-doku​men​ta​tion​.com

Studio for Propositional Cinema, Manual: The Camera of Disaster, 2022

Obects
Variable dimensions
Edition of 3 + 1 AP (# 3/3)
Courtesy the artist; Tanya Leighton, Berlin/​Los Angeles

Photo: kun​st​-doku​men​ta​tion​.com

Studio for Propositional Cinema, Manual: The Camera of Disaster, 2022

Objects
Variable dimensions
Edition of 3 + 1 AP (# 3/3)
Courtesy the artist; Tanya Leighton, Berlin/​Los Angeles

Photo: kun​st​-doku​men​ta​tion​.com

Sung Tieu, 51°28’29.1”N 0°04’55.6”W, 2019

HD video, sound
01:56 min.
Digital print
38 × 62 cm
Edition of 5 + 1 AP (# 1/5)
Courtesy the artist; Emalin, London

Photo: kun​st​-doku​men​ta​tion​.com

Sung Tieu, 51°28’29.1”N 0°04’55.6”W, 2019

HD video, sound
01:56 min.
Digital print
38 × 62 cm
Edition of 5 + 1 AP (# 1/5)
Courtesy the artist; Emalin, London

Photo: kun​st​-doku​men​ta​tion​.com

on affairs, 2023

Exhibition view

Photo: kun​st​-doku​men​ta​tion​.com

Noah Barker,_SFS_GM22, 2023

Wall painting, clear gloss lacquer
Variable dimension
Courtesy the artist; Fanta-MLN, Milan

Photo: kun​st​-doku​men​ta​tion​.com

Noah Barker,_SFS_GA22, 2023

Five-channel video
0:23 min.
Courtesy the artist; Fanta-MLN, Milan

Photo: kun​st​-doku​men​ta​tion​.com

Noah Barker,_SFS_GA22, 2023

Five-channel video
0:23 min.
Courtesy the artist; Fanta-MLN, Milan

Photo: kun​st​-doku​men​ta​tion​.com

Text

The present day and our media-based access to reality are determined by a myriad of digital and analogue linkages of text and image. The signs and symbols are stacked high in our shelves and smartphones, in our in-boxes, and in social media. Everything is mutually overlapping and layered. Of course, the system of art is also subject to all of this in certain fields, but by no means not fully so. The exhibition on affairs takes the act of immersion into this gigantic ocean of images and words and the salvaging of fragments and pieces from this ocean as a figure that can characterize and describe the practices on display: by isolating certain signs and extracting particles from this phalanx and thus making them visible in a different way. Separating out objects, images, and language has a long tradition in art, ranging from the readymade to minimal art, variations of pop art, of (post-)conceptual art, institutional critique, and relational aesthetics, right up to the forms of production of the present. Younger generations of artists in Austria and around the world draw on the rich history of challenging our media-based filters to perception of the world. The strategies they use are precise and diverse, and what they all share is an updated game with syntax, semantics, and materiality, with a high swell of art-immanence in waters that nonetheless need to be kept calm in the name of a concentrated perspective. 

Ghislaine Leung works with the given infrastructure of the exhibition in question, and may, for example, have all the unused wall segments painted brown at eye level, and the water of a fountain rush. Sung Tieu’s sculptural practice encompasses furniture or architectural elements from safe rooms and prisons, combining these with text fragments from the interpretation of dreams and psychoanalysis. These linkages and new combinations lead to lasting impressions of the social repression of the individual. In Lorenza Longhi’s practice, visual elements from communication strategies and objects that play a particular role in the present day are reproduced and rearranged together, whereby the artist uses artisanal techniques to test and challenge their alleged neutrality. At the core of Noah Barker’s practice are questions of attention and communication, assessing the legacy of late modernism in the social prerogative of recent cultural programming. Models, memories, and patterns borne by previous productions of itself and others are deployed through integrative formats. Vera Lutz is interested in closed systems, meaning on the one hand the hermetics of her own working processes, and also electricity circuits or guidance systems for blackout systems — albeit somewhat tongue in cheek. Milena Büsch looks at everyday and pop cultures and their representation in journals and magazines. She works over found photographs with her painting, focusing on the qualities of color that connect the different media. Carolyn Lazard’s work is interdisciplinary and cross-media, researching the social and political dimensions of the world of nursing at the interface of race, gender, and disability. With a focus on accessibility and dependence, their artworks and published writings present sickness as a location of surplus and collectivity. By means of language, actions, sounds and images, and through production, publication, exhibition, and fiction, the Studio for Propositional Cinema attempts to expand the formal and temporal conditions of given cultural formats beyond traditional consumer-based forms. 

The different variants of contemporary conceptual art that this exhibition brings together display a wide range of ways of addressing how art may be of assistance in better understanding and encountering our own time, as well as finding ways of negotiating it. Post-conceptual follows conceptual without the present-day relevance of its art becoming in any way exhausted in its future. The different ways of isolating and selecting images lead not only to more clarity concerning their own specific qualities, but also their relationship to the object in its fragile diversity, whether in language, poetry, or form. 

In dialogue with this exhibition, HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark is also presenting sink, a solo show by the Austrian conceptual artist Heinrich Dunst. The two exhibitions are accompanied by a joint program of events and a publication (saxpublishers, Vienna). 

Curated by Sandro Droschl and Jan Tappe

Artists

Participating artists

Noah Barker

*1991 California, lives in New York

Solo (et al.): Alienze, Vienna (2021), Löwengasse, Köln (2021), Fanta-MLN, Milan (2019), Lodos, Mexico City (2019), Air de Paris, Paris (2018), Éclair, Berlin (2017), And Now, Dallas (2016), First Continent, Baltimore (2015); Shows (et al.): Fluentum, Berlin (2022), Fanta, Milan (2022, 2018), MACRO, Museum of Contemporarty Art of Rome, Rom (2021), Air de Paris (2019), Fanta-MLN, Milan (2019), Lodos, Mexico City (2019), Galerie Nathalie Halgand, Vienna (2018), Meyer Kainer, Vienna (2017), Simon Lee, New York (2017), Seventeen, London (2016), Okayama, Japan (2016), James Kelly, Chicago (2016), Exo Exo, Paris (2016), Dark Arts International, Mexico City (2015)

Milena Büsch

*1980, lives in Frankfurt and Berlin

Solo (et al.): Felix Gaudlitz, Vienna (2022, 2019), Paris Internationale (2021), Forgo, Berlin (2020), Geld, London (2019), Diana Lambert, Vienna (2015); Shows (et al.): Galerie der Stadt Schwaz (2021), Lars Friedrich, Berlin (2020), Éduard Montassut, Paris (2019), Freudenberger, Vienna (2017), Nagel/​Draxler, Cologne (2013)

Carolyn Lazard

*1987 California, lives in Philadelphia

Solo (et al.): Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2022), Kunstverein Braunschweig (2021), Essex Street, New York (2020), Shoot the Lobster, New York (2018); Shows (u.a.): 59. Biennale di Venezia, Venice (2022), Museion, Bolzano (2022), Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2021), MoMA PS1, Long Island, New York (2021), Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt (2021), KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2021), Bonner Kunstverein (2021), Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2020), Galerie Thomas Schulte, Berlin (2020), Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia (2019), The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2019), Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2019), LUX, London (2018), Kunsthal Aarhus (2018), New Museum, New York (2017)

Ghislaine Leung

*1980 Stockholm, lives in London

Solo (et al.): Essex Street, New York (2022, 2019), Caravan, Oslo (2022), Ivory Tars, Glasgow (2022), Ordet, Mailand (2021), Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach (2021), Cabinet, London (2021), Netwerk, Aalst (2019, 2018, 2017), Künstlerhaus Stuttgart (2019), Chisenhale, London (2019), Reading International, Reading (2018), Cell Project Space, London (2017), Wiels, Brussels (2016); Shows (et al.): The Renaissance Society, Chicago (2022), mumok – Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Vienna (2022), Goldsmiths CCA, London (2022), CAPC, Bordeaux (2022), British Art Show 9, Plymouth, Manchester, Aberdeen (2021÷22), Museion, Bolzano (2021), Helmhaus Zürich, Zurich (2021), Felix Gaudlitz, Vienna (2021, 2019), Geneva Biennale, Geneva (2020), KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2019), ICA Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (2019)

Lorenza Longhi

*1991 Lecco, lives in Zurich

Solo (et al.): Fanta, Milan (2022, 2019, 2016), Ordet, Milan (2022), Kunsthalle Zurich (2021), Weiss Falk, Basel (2021), Bungalow, Berlin (2020), La Plage, Paris (2019), Playmouth Rock, Zurich (2019); Shows (et al.): Layr, Vienna (2022), Swiss Art Awards, Messe Basel (2022), PART, Rimini (2022), Bonner Kunstverein (2022), MACRO, Museum of Contemporarty Art of Rome, Rome (2022), Kunstverein Bielefeld (2021), Fondazione Prada, Venice (2021), Stadtgalerie, Bern (2021), Le Commun, Geneva (2021), Deborah Schamoni, Munich (2021), 17.Quadriennale d’arte, Rom, Rome (2020), Grand Palais, Bern (2020), Hyphen, Milan (2019), Kunst Halle St.Gallen (2019)

Vera Lutz

*1992 Munich, lives in Berlin

Solo (et al.): Felix Gaudlitz, Vienna (2022, 2018), RICE, Leipzig (2021), Piper Keys, London (2019); Shows (et al.):KOW, Berlin (2021), Sgomento Zurigo, Zurich (2020), Galerie Lars Friedrich, Berlin (2020), Kunstverein München, Munich (2019), Nous Moules, Vienna (2019), Jan Kaps, Cologne (2017), Taylor Macklin, Zurich (2017), Monnaie de Paris, Paris (2016), Instituto Svizzero, Rome (2016), Kunstverein Arnsberg (2015), Shanaynay, Paris (2015)

Studio For Propositional Cinema

*founded 2013 in Berlin

Solo (et al.): Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach (2022), Tanya Leighton, Berlin (2022, 2015, 2014), Galerie Max Mayer, Düsseldorf (2022), Fondazione Morra Greco, Naples (2019), Kunsthalle Sankt Gallen (2018), Kestner Gesellschaft, Hannover (2017), Swiss Institute, New York (2017), Taylor Macklin, Zurich (2017), Bonner Kunstverein (2016), Kunsthaus Bregenz (2016), mumok – Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Vienna (2015); Shows (et al.): Galeria Wschód, Warschau (2022), km Kunstverein Munich (2021), Material, Zurich (2021), Layr, Vienna (2021), ML Fine Art, Milan (2020), Akademie-Galerie, Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (2019), Projektsrom Normanns, Stavanger (2019), Bielefelder Kunstverein (2018), Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen (2015), Leeschenhof, Quadriennale, Düsseldorf (2014)

Sung Tieu

*1987 Hai Duong, lives in Berlin and London

Solo (et al.): Mudam, Luxemburg (2022), Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Hamburg (2022, 2017), Kunstmuseum Bonn (2021), Stedelijk Museum Commission, Amsterdam (2021), Stiftung für Zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig (2021), Emalin, London (2020), Nottingham Contemporary (2020), Haus der Kunst, Munich (2020), Fragile, Berlin (2019), The Yard & Flat Time House, London (2019), Nha San Collective, Hanoi (2017), FIAC Art Fair, Paris (2015); Shows (et al.): Albertinum Dresden (2022), Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo (2022), Preis der Nationalgalerie, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2021), Kyiv Biennale, Kiev (2021), Taipei Fine Arts Museum (2021), 34. Bienal de São Paulo (2021), Kunsthalle Basel (2021), Layr, Vienna (2021), Museum Angewandte Kunst, Frankfurt (2020), Kunsthaus Hamburg (2019), Royal Academy of Arts, London (2018), Kunstverein Nürnberg, Nuremberg (2018)

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