ON THE NEW

Vienna currently boasts a particularly varied and lively young art production and presentation scene. Which is reflected in the show Über das Neue. Junge Kunst aus Wien (lit. On the new. Young art from Vienna), which grants an insight into the creative practice of eighteen artists up to an age of thirty-five. Based on the exhibition Über das Neue. Junge Szenen in Wien (On the new. Young scenes in Vienna), presented at Belvedere 21 in the spring of this year, concepts and selection have been adapted to the spatial situation at Kunstraum Innsbruck. What curators Severin Dünser and Luisa Ziaja have fundamentally tried to achieve is to set the objectives and opinions of various protagonists in relation to their forms of expression, even though it is impossible to represent the full spectrum of young art in Vienna.     

The exhibition title was chosen in full awareness of the problems that terms like new, young, and local entail, because in them is also mirrored the problems of the format itself. The “new” in art is a concept loaded in many ways. In modernity, it paradigmatically stands for the endeavour of artistic avant-gardes to shake off what had come before, to surpass it, and, in a visionary manner, not only to design a new art, but also a new humanity, a new world. Pluralism, polyphony, and multiperspectivity, on the other hand, have become key terms for a post-modern aesthetic, characterised by the dissolution of boundaries between genres, media, high and popular culture, art and everyday life. In an interplay of over-stimulation (through digital media, hyper-circulating images and contents) on the one hand and exhaustion (through a permanent recycling of cultural forms of expression) on the other, the idea of the new has disappeared completely from contemporary thinking. The present thus is permeated by the past in a way that distinctions erode. Apparently submerged also seems to be the knowledge that all this is not new, and that the new in fact was possible at some time, but also that a different reality is imaginable. In the term of the new, therefore, various discourses and schools of thought meet, which can be understood as the framework conditions of contemporary artistic production. At the same time, this concept, in its colloquial dimension, evokes individual expectations in the respective recipient, which presumably have to remain unfulfilled. This discrepancy, and the resulting need for discussion, the curators try to address by way of the title, which directly quotes Boris Groys.  

Going in search of the new in the studios of young Viennese artists, certain tendencies emerged. Thus, workmanship and the mastering of traditional techniques have turned out crucial to many of the artists involved, often in combination with a great gusto for experimenting with materials and their specific characteristics. In his painterly perfection, reminiscent of the old masters,

Marc-Alexandre Dumoulin, for example, creates lucid portraits, while Edin Zenun uses oil, clay and pigment to deal with questions of figurativeness and abstraction, immanent to the medium of painting. Transforming mole tunnels into sculptures, Angelika Loderer experiments with the tools of traditional metal cast production. Sasha Auerbakh, on the other hand, instead of exploring the specific characteristics of her materials, dismisses them much rather in the course of an obsessive work process. By casting cardboard boxes, serving as precarious shelters for the night, in concrete, 

Cäcilia Brown plays with contradictory connotations of the volatile and the lasting. And in Birke Gorm’s vase-like sand sculpture, too, aesthetics of the haptic-artisanal are emphasised. The conditions of the digital transformation and the ever more seamless immersion in various media dispositifs are reflected here, in direct or indirect form, in numerous works. In meticulous drawing, i.e. analogous, processes, Maureen Kaegi, for instance, deals with perceptual phenomena of the digital noise, which she counters by way of contemplative immersion. Lukas Posch, meanwhile, is interested in the invasive stimulating effects of the digital on the body and mind of the individual, which he counteracts through the means of painting. Nana Mandl, finally, works along the fault lines of the visual in our present age by feeding the inflation of digital image production and circulation back into the analogous space through her material collage.  

The Internet offers liberties and endless opportunities for development, information, entertainment and consumption. The flawlessness of the digital has a great attraction, even if we know that algorithms are trying to make our user behaviour frictionless and suspect that we are subject to manipulation attempts. Even with a responsible use, the proposals of the Internet tempt us to spend large parts of our spare time with them. Which also entails a disembodiment, an alienation from our physicality. In contradiction to this development, physicality seems to be an important issue for several of the artists presented. 

Lucia Elena Průša, for example, deals with the subjective perception of time, triggered by processes within the body. For Barbara Kapusta the body is relevant as a connecting link in which inside and outside merge. Cäcilia Brown, for her part, positions the body and its needs in public space, while Marina Sula is interested in how stance and behaviour are corrected through architectural structures.  For Anna-Sophie Berger physical presence also is a factor in the context of her own mobility between various geographical places of residence. Which results in a moment of fragmentation in the construction of identity between cosmopolitanism and rootedness, and thus the question of belonging, which also engages other artists in the exhibition. Johannes Gierlinger, for instance, addresses historical and current political radicalisations in the context of national identity constructs. Matthias Noggler, in contrast, describes belonging as a process of group dynamics, which is subject to mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion and entails forms of subjectivisation. Rosa Rendl’s photographs revolve around identity and its projection resp. the construction of authenticity, while Melanie Ebenhoch makes the correlation between the reception of artworks and the assumption of projections on the personage of the artist the starting point for reflections on painting as a medium of representation. And also with Philipp Timischl, who focuses on origin and sexuality as factors which influence social belonging, the question of identity construction leads to a meditation on its representation or emancipation through forms of self-expression.  The formation of belonging goes hand in hand with processes of individualisation. Which in the exhibition becomes obvious not only on the meta level of the construction conditions of identity. It also can be seen in efforts of giving artistic expression to one’s own identity in its individuality beyond the claims to universality and objectivity. In contrast to individual mythologies à la Harald Szeemann, the archetypal and obsessiveness may be absent here, but tendencies towards a retreat into the private and subjective can be made out in several of the artists involved. Inspired by the wish for authenticity, emotion and empathy become the content of works placing individual sensitivities centre stage. This can be felt in Lonely Boy’s music videos just as well as in the interior landscapes that Marc-Alexandre Dumoulin unfolds in front of us. Also when Lucia Elena Průša depicts time as a subjective notion, or Philipp Timischl assembles personal affective states into a retrospective introspective, inner conditions become the expression of worldviews implying the big picture in the existential.