TARWUK:

Бољи живот

TARWUK

3.6.–10.9.2023

Behind the freely invented pseudonym TARWUK are the two Croatian-born artists Bruno Pogačnik Tremow and Ivana Vukšić, who live in New York. The duo has been working together since 2014, making sculptures, paintings, drawings, performances, films, and installations that shape their multidisciplinary practice. Their works are characterized by a many-layered aesthetic that indicates the two artists’ own great interest in art history. At the same time their sculpture and objects in particular have dystopian and futuristic features. Looking at the past and the future leads to an anachronistic practice that sees the present day as one temporal and spatial existential space among many others. This eclectic approach to time is also reflected in the materials and media used. The objects and sculptures often resemble injured human bodies and look like archeological relics or totems, and they also have signs of inhuman science-fiction-like man-machines. This impression is caused by the accumulation of materials such as synthetic resin, leather, wax, clay, animal bones, and found objects that seem to charge these objects mystically and spiritually. These works are strongly shaped by fragmented representation of the body, with inevitable associations to psycho-traumatic experience and states of mind. Tremow and Vukšić were both born in a state that no longer exists today. The memory of war and the disintegration of Yugoslavia influence the artist to this day, although they do not work through specific events of personal experiences in their works but instead create a kind of riven physical and mental state, as form of fragmented existence that can never be healed.

This large solo exhibition Бољи живот (Serbian Cyrillic, phonetic Bolji život, in English: a better life) at HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark is the first institutional exhibition of these artists’ work in German-speaking Europe and the hitherto most comprehensive project in their career. The exhibition shows various groups of works, some of which are being shown for the first time in a museum context. This leads to a site-specific show that is also inspired by the direct environment of the city of Graz and the unique architecture of the museum. Graz is close to Croatia, where the artists were born, and they know the city well. Both Styria and also Austrian art production in general have always been important points of reference for TARWUK, whereby they are particularly interested in the history of fantastic realism and local variants of surrealism.

The exhibition Fantastic Surrealists is simultaneously on show at HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark, and in dialogue with TARWUK’s own interest in surrealism this creates connections to related positions in Austrian art history. Both exhibitions are accompanied by a program of events and education.