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Intro

Leon Höllhumer

Leon Höllhummer, Insalata di Sentimenti, 2024

Vegetables, fake blood, glazed ceramic, air pump
Ø 30 cm

The artistic practice of Leon Höllhumer (*1986 Styria, lives in Vienna) stems from ideas around performativity: be it an action, a scene or a specific situation which he intends to create. In his work, transitions between individual pieces, as well as between scenic and installation elements are always fluid rather than rigid or categorical. The characters that populate his work, whether human, non-human or superhuman, allow themselves to get carried away in all sorts of ways. The Feast is Höllhumer’s most extensive institutional exhibition to date, presenting a multi-sensory experience that is not limited to the tastebuds.

Whether the occasion is a party, a funeral or something else remains completely open to interpretation. The collision of revelry and debauchery with allusions to a death as well as numerous erotic and sexual encounters is not coincidental but all part of Höllhumer’s plan. The French writer Georges Bataille (1897 – 1962) described erotic experience as an insight into the sensation of death. According to Bataille, this experience reveals a cultural taboo on the one hand and its transgression on the other. Only by pushing a taboo to its limits is it possible to transcend the ego. In Höllhumer’s work, characters seek ecstasy: pure pleasure that medieval mysticism found in religious immersion, in subjective taboo-breaking and physical self-exposure.

For Bataille, these experiences are anchored in a multitude of cultural articulations, and it is possible to discover a rich reservoir of ideas revolving around death and sexuality, not only in the visual arts, but especially in popular culture. Bataille regarded art as one of the highest manifestations of eroticism, as it challenges social norms through its capacity for transgression, and makes it possible to experience existence in its most radical form. According to him, works of art are an expression of a deep, metaphysical longing for the infinite and the forbidden. They do not exist to calm or to entertain the viewer, but to tear them away from their usual reality and to put them in a state of shock. A central concept of Bataille’s work is that of waste:” eroticism, like art, is not about rational utility or functional expediency, but about a reckless use of both energy and life. Art and eroticism are therefore always a celebration of excess and irrationality. Through this radical practice of wastefulness, Bataille believed that human-beings become aware of their limitations and mortality, which enables a deeper experience of freedom and existential truth.

In Höllhumer’s artistic practice, the human body is often used as a primary form of expression not only in his performances and films, but also in his sculptures and installations. The artist deals intensively with the question of corporeality and its limits. Often depicting the body as an object of delimitation, sexuality and violence, his work’s examination of human existence is strongly reminiscent of Bataille’s idea of the body and sexuality as a means of transgression, i.e. the transgression of social norms and ideas. Höllhumer equips the body with a transgressive role by presenting it both as a source of pleasure and as a sign of decay and destruction. This dual perspective on the body is linked to Bataille’s concept of eroticism, which considers the body as a terrain of rebellion against the order of reason and norms.