TRANSITIONS

Perspectives from in-between.

Krinzinger Projekte, 2017
presented by BLOCKREI

Artists:
Christina Romirer / Jeannine Jesch / Sarah Bechter / Sebastian Grande / Song Jing / Tina Kult / Verena Zangerle / Veronika Beringer / Živa Drvarič

Curators:
Bahar Ahu Sağın (Turkey) / Ilaria Goglia (Italy) / Ilethia Sharp (USA) / Lucia Galvez Chico (Mexico) / Malou Solfjeld (Denmark) / Michaela Bear (Australia) / Oleksandra Poliushkina (Ukraine) / Pedro Henrique de Melo (Brasil) / Tan Yue (China) / Victoria Vargas Downing (Chile)

In the framework of the residency program for international emerging curators Curators’ Agenda: VIENNA 2017, BLOCKFREI presents, in collaboration with the University of Applied Arts Vienna, the group exhibition TRANSITIONS, Perspectives from in-between at KRINZINGER PROJEKTE, on display from 24. October until 4. November 2017.

TRANSITIONS, Perspectives from in-between is a joint project by ten international curators that exhibits nine artists from the University of Applied Arts Vienna. The curatorial team has been exploring the Viennese art scene within the 6-week residency program Curators’ Agenda: VIENNA 2017, organised by the association BLOCKFREI. The fourth edition of the program will culminate in a final mutual group exhibition taking place at KRINZINGER PROJEKTE.

In-between offers a unique space to reflect on the past and speculate possibilities for the future. The title of the exhibition draws upon the non-reductive moment of transition, which is at once suspended, yet fleeting. The recurrent themes of melancholy and emptiness reminiscent of the mal du siècle from the 19th century, leading to the fin de siècle – the transition from one era to another; cause anxiety but also open up the possibility of progress if we are all willing to engage in an exchange of values, resources and perspectives.
As articulated by Michel Foucault in his Heterotopia and by Marc Augé in his Non-Places, we find ourselves in an undefined territory of flux, reinforced by the illusion of endless opportunities, which seem to be the malady of the century. If we go left, we won’t find what’s right, and vice versa, so we end up not moving anywhere, paralysed by our own indecisiveness, which takes us back to where we came from.
The artworks on display at KRINZINGER PROJEKTE isolate this realm of existence through diverse manifestations that explore physical and mental states of transitional spheres.

Krinzinger Projekte
Schottenfeldgasse 45


„Wir haben das Glück erfunden”, sagen die letzten Menschen und blinzeln,
2017, empty fortune cookies as give-away,

Text from the exhibition catalogue:

Veronika Abigail Beringer’s interactive work playfully subverts expectations. ‘The last man’ references Friedrich Nietzsche’s antithesis to the ‘Übermensch’ (‘superior being’), who is re-interpreted by Slavoj Žižek as the ‘post capitalistic human being’, who got too comfortable, takes no risks and only tries to preserve the status quo. The metaphoric void created by the work references the emptiness felt by ‘the modern man’ who lacks the need for fulfillment and therefore the need for prophecies of good fortune seem to have vanished.