Narratives

Artists from two generations based in Austria and neighbouring countries link their work thus creating a band of thrilling stories: antipodes are mixed up, visitors taken along on narrative journeys through the mind. New – or, yet familiar? – strands of narration are spun like threads through an amorphous space. Narratives are worlds one enters, stays in for a while and then abandons. Mostly they do not have the format of a self-contained story. They rather correspond to coincidental encounters, glances of events, having a before and an after, thus sometimes correspond uncannily to reality. She was not really sure whether she should approach the broadly smiling lady at reception. Why such a big smile? Aren’t smiles often used to mask an attack? Quite frequently she had observed that people often only smile, if they want something. Most of the time they want your money. No this woman makes this irritatingly inviting gesture: “Come with me, I will take you on a journey into the unknown”, she susurrates under her shiny white teeth. Unknown? Usually not good.
This or some similar way is how the literary formulation of a visit to the Narratives exhibition could start: already waiting in the foyer, the young group of artists around Martin Bricelj will introduce visitors to a world of the imaginary in the mind with their installation Everlandia. Just like the first page of a book, upon entering an exhibition space, a door opens up into a new world that wants to transport our visitors away. Our understanding of space and time from various different perspectives is also thematised in Narratives. Numerous works relate directly to the site and have been created for it. The house is the point of inception and the ball in play ball, or better: the “house within the house”, the artists take possession of turning it into some kind of “dream landscape”.
Narrative forms and structures are another focus of the exhibition. The concept in the composition of work and the narratives and contents, form and structure they share is made visible in the design. The exhibition is subdivided into chapters and confronts two generations, opening up sudden insights and dragging the visitors into spatially differing narrative situations. Blank spaces, in both a spatial and content-related sense function as places for contemplation opening up in the sense of an echo for inner images. Just like turning a page…