Annemarie Arzberger
dreamt awake

Annemarie Arzberger’s pictorial worlds are highly imaginative and rich, simultaneously lavishly baroque and full of detail, and sometimes uncanny and bizarre; they are always populated by a large number of creatures that make us curious. Arzberger’s work originates both in drawings and in paintings, and for some years now she has also been making sculptural figures that can be used as movable and playable puppets as well as being exhibited in classical static form.

For HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark, the artist has developed her own piece for the first time in her performative exhibition, creating a setting for her puppets with three scenes set in an imaginary spaceship, an exhibition, and the spaces that define the scenes: the Schlouflaboar, the Houloudecks, and the Space-Grotten-Disco. The piece is a combination of physical and puppet theater, performed by the artist together with her sister Katharina Arzberger and accompanied by musical moments arranged by Manuel Obriejetan.

During the première, the stage setting becomes a walk-in installation, which is activated situationally by means of shorter scenes and songs in different blocks, thus bringing to life the combination of puppets, paintings, and stages, which can also be understood as a small exhibition of works. Visitors almost become part of the scenery themselves. Through the intertwining of the supposedly childish medium of puppet theater, a more than unusual visual language, and the transfer of the individual characters into a comprehensive visual world, Annemarie Arzberger succeeds in creating a very unique, playful, poetic, and at the same time unpretentious approach that equally enchants, amuses, and irritates.

Free admission

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