Diego Bianchi
Celina Eceiza 

On the occasion of their exhibitions Errores Irreales and Ofrenda, which opened yesterday at HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark, Argentinian artists Diego Bianchi and Celina Eceiza will talk about their work and motivations together with Agustina Vizcarra, Head of Exhibitions at Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, and Sandro Droschl, Director of HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark. In their expansive installations, the artists expand the space of the institution and address questions of physicality, materiality, and modernity, while also engaging with cultural and political realities of Argentina.

Through structural interventions, Diego Bianchi creates installations reminiscent of lanscapes from antiquity and retro-futurism, in which his figures, constructed from everyday objects and discarded items deliberately collected in urban spaces, appear as protagonists. These seemingly dystopian, ironic scenes are also activated by performances on several dates, setting the institution in motion. While Bianchi’s sculptures reference the human form, they are diverse in interpretation and in some cases prosthetically enhanced. With this approach, the artist poses questions about the physicality of bodies and their potential optimisation, or even sublimation. In addition, Bianchi subverts the relationship between subjects and objects by blurring their distinctions: He imbues agency in the objects he has collected, such as mannequins, vacuum cleaner hoses, and table tennis bats, while at the same time objectifying the bodies represented by his sculptures and the performers he works with, so that the overall installation resembles a kind of machinery. Since he considers inter-objective instead of inter-subjective relationships to be fundamental to the social sphere, consumption chains, for example, can be better explained by also understanding objects as agents than through merely inter-subjective interactions.

Celina Eceiza, on the other hand, creates a ​“soft museum” using hundreds of meters of textiles that she has dyed, bleached, and embellished with batik, paintings on textiles, and collages made from textiles, resembling an organ that visitors can enter. The imagery of her textile paintings depict oversized bodies or their accentuated extremities. These figures seem to dance and interact with the bodies of the visitors. The immersive spatial intervention invites visitors to explore and encounter others, but above all – to take something that seems to be in short supply: time. In addition to her images, Eceiza also references artists of Argentine modernism by painting their names and collaging them into her fabric architectures almost like fan posters. As such, her exhibition Ofrenda, not only acts as a gift to visitors, but also to Argentine artists who appear far too rarely in the Western art-historical canon.

Both Bianchi and Eceiza are inspired by Argentinian art history and refer artists involved in countercultural movements reacting critically to current and past events. In this group conversation, the unique ways in which both artists also create alternative spaces of experience will be explored in more detail, and discussed in relation to their views on Argenina’s past and present.

Immediately following the artist talk, Diego Bianchi’s exhibition will be activated by a performance.

​Performers: Shiva Abossedgh, Sam Beukeboom, Barbara Eglseer, Gea Gračner, Reina Harriet Gujer, Anna Mayor, Jonas Meiberg, Mariella Müller, Laci Sárkány, Emilie Viktoria Ottilie Willner