Panther Residency, STAGES

As part of its program, HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark is pleased to present the Panther Residencies and the STAGES program. Named after the dazzling mythical creature and heraldic animal of Styria, the program brings together scholarships for artists whose practice is rooted in the field of contemporary art.

The focus is on the annual promotion of one international and several local artists. In exchange with the HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark, guests are provided with project-specific support for their artistic work. In the course of the residencies, research and exchange with local protagonists will result in the production of a new work, which will be presented within the exhibition program.

HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark sees itself as an initiator of diverse dialogues and aims to make local resources available to both international and local scholarship holders in order to create a good working environment. At the same time, the institution is committed to introducing new and relevant artistic voices to the diverse cultural and art scene in Graz as well as to the general public. Guests are invited to present their practice in various public formats and to respond to the lively local art scene. Both residency formats are directly linked to the institution’s thematic focus through their concrete connection to an exhibition.

Diego Bianchi’s (*1969 in Buenos Aires, lives in Buenos Aires) work includes sculptures and installations that often merge into performance art and deal with themes of aesthetics and society. His sculptures repeatedly highlight the use of the human body as one of the central aspects of his work. He combines physical forms with objects that at first glance bear no resemblance to each other. They express the artist’s interest in everyday objects and the relationship we develop with them. The objects come together to form new shapes that transcend the boundaries between humans and objects, thus taking on new meaning. In addition, he does not seek to emphasize the beauty of human beings, but rather highlights their brutality and deformity.

Bianchi also creates room-filling installations, which are sometimes accompanied by performances. His works are characterized by the intense interplay of object, body, and space, which he repeatedly activates through performative stagings, blurring the boundaries between them. In his exhibition Errores Irreales, developed for HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark, he designs an installation that references the architecture of the building, while performers act out the scene. Thus, the artist’s work in Graz is simultaneously an exhibition through the presentation of sculptures, an installation through the furnishing of the space with architectural constructions, and a performance through the participation of actors. This interplay develops a narrative that was created specifically for this location, using objects he found in Graz. His stay in Graz was preceded by a longer residency in Paris, which he completed with the Jocelyn Wolff Gallery and the Antoine de Galbert Foundation. In fall 2025, he will take over as director of the ARTE DI Tella Academy in Buenos Aires.

In the work of filmmaker Antonia De La Luz Kašik (*1993 in Graz, lives in Vienna), the camera plays a central role as an apparatus. It is used to connect different visual worlds or bring them together. To this end, she explores the technical possibilities of analog cameras and film material. Building on existing works, the artist developed a new film for her participation in Systems of Belief that pushes the boundaries of the medium.

Optical constructions are attached to the camera, which, positioned between the device and the outside world, both transform the depicted reality and become part of the image themselves. This creates kaleidoscopic visual worlds that reflect and abstract the gaze. Various practices of abstract and experimental forms of filmmaking play a central role in the exhibition and enable new perspectives on the understanding of technology, perception, and the world. HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark is therefore delighted to have nominated Antonia De La Luz Kašik, an artist who is once again addressing these phenomena from a contemporary perspective, for the Panther Residency.

November 10, 2022, Artist Talk

https://​halle​-fuer​-kun​st​.at/​e​n​/​p​r​o​g​r​a​m​/2022 – 11-10-panther-resident-artist-talk-antonia-de-la-luz-kasik/

For the first international Panther Residency at HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark, artist Colin Self (*1987 in Aloha, lives in Berlin) was invited to develop a new work for the performance series Give Rise to.

For the piece Tip the Ivy, Colin Self chose the narrative setting of a prison in which inmates attempt to gain freedom between reality and the dream world. One of the characters is less an actual person than an avatar who communicates via a cell phone screen. This role was inspired, among other things, by various real profiles of TikTok users who, especially in non-democratic countries, share otherwise censored information via social networks through various sequences of movements, such as in makeup tutorials.

Tip the Ivy is a project based on collaboration and collective work that highlights the positive power of queer communities on the one hand, and on the other hand stages the bitter political realities of surveillance and censorship in the here and now as an experimental opera. Self achieves this by reinterpreting the classical genre, in which voices and singing are understood as a collective force. To this end, Self developed XOIR, a new technique of communal singing that focuses not on reciting sheet music, but on somatic awareness and the coordinated organization of bodies and voices.

25. – 26.2.2022, Tip the Ivy, Performance

https://​halle​-fuer​-kun​st​.at/​e​n​/​e​x​h​i​b​i​t​i​o​n​s​/​g​i​v​e​-​r​i​s​e​-​t​o​-​c​o​l​i​n​-​self/

Coming from different backgrounds and currently working as an artist duo, Ilkin Beste Çirak (*1994 in Izmir) and Nigel Gavus (*1992 in Graz) seek to synthesize various media: poetry, film, literature, sculpture, and space are their fields of exploration. Taking public spaces as the core of coexistence, Ilkin Beste Çirak deals with localities, identity, cultural production, and participation. In his work, Nigel Gavus explores time, memory, identity, and the relationship between poetry and cinema.

The joint work of the two is clearly structured and multi-layered. Their goal is to translate invisible themes into a visual language and to question the role of visual ​“codes” in our society. Their collaboration addresses identity and belonging, as well as spatial design in the style of relational art and aesthetics. Their first film collaboration, Letters from a Window, premiered at Diagonale 21′ and won the audience award for the most popular Austrian short film under ten minutes at the Vienna Shorts Film Festival.

As part of Domestic Drama, the artist duo produced a new film that combines the themes of the exhibition with the specific setting of the city of Graz.

14.12.2021 – 20.2.2022, It’s on a day like this…, video work

https://​halle​-fuer​-kun​st​.at/​e​n​/​e​x​h​i​b​i​t​i​o​n​s​/​d​o​m​e​s​t​i​c​-​d​rama/

The STAGES format is as radical as it is simple. For one evening at a time, HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark provides a platform for artists from the immediate vicinity who live in or have close ties to Styria. Part of the exhibition hall is used as a stage to learn more about the artists’ work. Our guest can decide for themselves whether this will take the form of a performance, a screening, or something else. Increasingly, small exhibition formats are also being developed, some of which can be viewed over several days. Artists are asked to present their work with a statement.

Jesaja Aljoscha Trummer (*2000 in Graz, lives in Vienna) is a painter and producer of animated films. In his artistic work, he explores the interaction between two- and three-dimensional spaces, investigating the painterly illusion of textile collages. Trummer often uses oil paints, which he applies like fine threads to ​“sew” his compositions together, or uses impasto to achieve a unique texture and depth effect. His works oscillate between abstract and figurative representations. They are characterized by an atmospheric density that creates a poetic synthesis of the uncanny and the delightful. In this way, he succeeds in constructing a complex narrative that touches on both personal and universal dimensions.

In his works, which are inspired by traditional textiles, local art, and motifs from the Baroque period and children’s book illustrations, representational and abstract elements blur together — it is about points of contact, overlaps, and the painterly experimentation with structures that can remain both orderly and open.

In his presentation Mustertücher, Trummer introduces a visual vocabulary that appears raw and direct, yet at the same time skillfully and deliberately subverts expectations of representation. Between textile and grid, an astonishingly intense painterly realm unfolds, exploring the relationship between image, material, and their perception.

September 11 – 14, 2025, Mustertücher, exhibition

https://​halle​-fuer​-kun​st​.at/​e​n​/​p​r​o​g​r​a​m​/2025 – 09-11-stages-trummer/

With her self-produced series Peak Season, Nanna Kaiser (*1991 in Friesach, lives in Vienna) attempts to capture an interim state, similar to her previous works. She starts with specific objects that are not only associated with attributes such as dominance and power, but also radiate them. In this context, Kaiser appropriates objects using archaic and artisanal methods and exposes the material used, which, in her view, has been subjected to a transformation process that can be understood in almost political terms. Through this process, the material then becomes a very fragile substance.

Her works on display evoke surreal associations not only through their exposed materiality, which focuses in an almost fragile way on the melancholic aspects of a gloomy environment. At the same time, in the spirit of a combination of materials that have been taken apart, her objects also exude an apocalyptic mood that precisely reflects our era marked by populism and climate change.

May 8 – 11, 2025, Peak Season, exhibition

https://​halle​-fuer​-kun​st​.at/​e​n​/​p​r​o​g​r​a​m​/2025 – 05-08-nanna-kaiser/

Hanna Besenhard (*1995 in Graz, lives in Vienna) works with video, sound, sculpture, objects, and documents, as well as stamp cards and fake driver’s licenses, combining multiple media. Her work focuses on time-based devices, their technological foundations and histories, and their representative and temporal dynamics. A recurring element is the combination of classic analog materials such as marble, felt, or animal fur with digital printing processes and video. Her primary concern is not the clash between these levels or the highlighting of contrasts, but rather the condensation into an overall narrative. This is also where Besenhard’s connection to the concurrent exhibitions by Caroline Mesquita and Leon Höllhumer lies.

For her interpretation of the STAGES format, she uses the title of the series as a starting point and develops an installation from stage elements that give space to existing works and integrate a new video work. A single wedge of white Thassos marble tilts the stack of stage elements slightly upward on one side. The concept of a stage, and its long history as a starting point for time-based languages, becomes an object. The tilted stack makes use of the essence of sequential media without conventional temporal flow. The accompanying video work stages two projectors both as objects and, through projection, as a rhythmic framework created by the transfer from analog to digital derivatives.

January 23, 2025, exhibition

https://​halle​-fuer​-kun​st​.at/​e​n​/​p​r​o​g​r​a​m​/2025 – 01-23-stages-hanna-besenhard/

Patrick Winkler (*1992 in Graz, lives in Vienna) focuses in his practice on the concept of space and the perception of spaces. He examines spatial strategies and the power relations associated with them, i.e., the intertwining of public and private spaces and how this manifests itself, for example, in the relationship between institutions, in which these cannot be thought of separately from one another, but rather exist in a state of tension with one another.

He has a similar interest in the relationships between sculpture, architecture, and institutions, and how hegemonies can be maintained or deconstructed in this context. He translates this directly into his practice by collecting emulsion paints from various Austrian and international institutions, such as the white wall paint from the mumok in Vienna. He creates new constructions from found institutional wall pieces. In doing so, he always references the history of the white cube and institutional criticism.

November 2 – 3, 2024, Constructing the representation of a space. Display for eternity. Exhibition

https://​halle​-fuer​-kun​st​.at/​e​n​/​p​r​o​g​r​a​m​/2024 – 10-31-patrick-winkler/

Jakob Kolb (*1992 in Deutschlandsberg, lives in Vienna) is not only active in the fields of painting and sculpture, but also regularly works as a curator and, as On Bells, in music and performance. Under the project name On Bells, he creates a mixture of lo-fi soul, synth pop, and beat making, often accompanied by guitar sounds. For him, On Bells is an independent ​“being” that embodies his music. His self-written and produced songs range in mood from romanticism to gloom to euphoria. In his work — both musical and visual — he incorporates autobiographical and fictional elements, with the creative process determining whether an idea is realized as a song, image, or installation. Kolb does not see his two artistic activities as separate, but as equal forms of expression. He describes himself as an artist who works between media and deliberately blurs their boundaries.

For his evening at HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark, Kolb has explored the theme of love songs and developed a musical performance. Old and new enter into dialogue, offering insights into his musical approach within the framework of a set and creating a unique emotional world. The setting for his performance is a mobile stage consisting of four LED curtains, which create an immersive visual experience.

August 29, 2024, Performance

https://​halle​-fuer​-kun​st​.at/​e​n​/​c​o​n​t​e​x​t​/​s​t​a​g​e​s​-​j​a​k​o​b​-​kolb/

Lisa Slawitz (*1987 in Graz, lives in Vienna) observes and processes themes such as relationships and sexuality in a patriarchal society with regard to unconscious patterns, the simultaneity of emotions, and the relationship to oneself and other subjects and objects.

In her work Her flexing of muscles spreads the smell of vanilla pudding, she once again shows that she perceives painting as a process of gaining insight and intuitively draws on memories and visual impressions to translate perceptions of body and mind into pictorial elements. A central theme of her work is the tension between beauty and ugliness, exploring their individual and collective perception. Through a playful engagement with the unfamiliar, new and sometimes humorous forms emerge. Furthermore, emotions serve as fundamental sources of inspiration for her, because although they seem everyday, they are at the same time subtle and complex. The artist attempts to give these emotions visual form by questioning their appearance and capturing them in her paintings. Combined with her keen interest in color schemes, light, and sound, she imbues her works with a desire for individual reception and emotional development.

April 12 – 14, 2024, Signing Reality flat, exhibition

https://​halle​-fuer​-kun​st​.at/​e​n​/​p​r​o​g​r​a​m​/2024 – 04-11-stages-lisa-slawitz/

The nominee for the open call in fall 2023 is artist Bernadette Laimbauer (*1989 in Gmunden, lives in Mooskirchen), who organized an evening in December at HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark for the STAGES format. In her performative work, Laimbauer combines elements of the performing and visual arts with the medium of performance, which in her case can include surprising moments in the familiar. Intuitive reactions in the moment play just as important a role in her performances as the ​“humor in the seemingly tragic.”

The performer Bernadette Laimbauer used the STAGES format to present her previous work to the audience, which for the artist, who just moved to Styria, is also a kind of self-introduction. The medium of choice was not a lecture, but a quiz in which the artist’s latest work could be won. If you wanted to win the main prize, you had to answer the questions about her practice correctly. The prize itself, Permesso or Please Don’t Lie with a Towel, addresses the relationship between work and leisure, as well as the strange intermediate role of art, or as Madonna puts it in her song Holiday: ​“One day to come together to release the pressure.”

December 15, 2023, Performance

https://​halle​-fuer​-kun​st​.at/​e​n​/​p​r​o​g​r​a​m​/2023 – 12-15-stages-bernadette-laimbauer/

Radula aka Anja Herzog (*1992 in Räckelwitz, lives in Graz) is a painter, sculptor, and sound artist whose works are characterized by their fantastical, otherworldly appearance. At the center of her work are strange creatures whose symbolic content serves as a means of raising awareness. Radula’s creations seek to discover beauty in the unusual and recognize strengths in the supposedly weak. Her imagination knows no bounds, resulting in the creation of beings and worlds with

unreal content. Other essential aspects of her work are human nature and social dynamics. She repeatedly draws on traditional subjects in art and transforms them into a contemporary context with current discourses and questions about their norms.

In addition to painting and sculpture, the artist continuously explores new techniques and media. Her paintings are characterized by a combination of light and dark tones, whose contrasts create an almost surreal blurring of shapes and, at the same time, sculptural figures. The sculptures and paintings reflect in three-dimensional form what she wants to express in her paintings. Radula herself describes her work, through the creation of creatures and imagined scenes, as storytelling and a process of self-reflection and discovery.

July 27 – 30, 2023, exhibition

https://​halle​-fuer​-kun​st​.at/​e​n​/​p​r​o​g​r​a​m​/2023 – 07-27-stages-radula/

Helene Thümmel (*1990 in Graz, lives in Graz) is a media artist, scenographer, stage and costume designer. To present her concepts, Thümmel uses texts, films, objects, collages, and photography, often integrated into installations, thereby tangibly depicting the development of situations and circumstances. She combines analog and digital means to reproduce the results of her research. The main motifs of her work are politics, society, science, and the intertwining of these themes with constants such as distance, space, and boundaries. She stages historical and social upheavals, exploring their effects and changes on places and people. Key keywords associated with her projects are space, materiality, and situation. She focuses in particular on the different types and dimensions of relationships between body parts and space, between people and buildings, and between groups and places.

Helene Thümmel’s contribution to STAGES was a lecture on part of her work, in particular the project Wo ist Tito? TITO IN SITU (2022), in which she documented and comprehensively reproduced changes in environments. At the heart of this work is the collective memory of a local population and how it deals with its own past.

April 13, 2023, performative artist lecture

https://​halle​-fuer​-kun​st​.at/​e​n​/​p​r​o​g​r​a​m​/2023 – 04-13-stages-helene-thuemmel/