Hybrids; The gallery festival with international curators in Vienna.

Happy to be able to take part in this festival on invitation of curator Gérard Goodrow and Projektraum Viktor Bucher!

 

galerieprojektraumviktorbucher

 

HYBRIDITIES

 

Aljoscha (UA)
Ulrike Buhl (D)
Willem Harbers (NL)
Julie Hayward (A)

 

Curated by Gérard A. Goodrow

 

Roughly one hundred years ago, the Dadaist Raoul Hausmann created his most famous work, the Mechanical Head (The Spirit of our Time): the “modern human” as a cyborg. The work bears witness to Modernism’s ambivalent embrace of industrialization and technology as catalysts of what Aldous Huxley would later describe as dystopian in his groundbreaking novel Brave New World (1931).

Today, much of what was fantasy one hundred years ago has become reality. Hybridity in the form of prostheses has become commonplace and almost omnipresent. Advances in medicine have improved our life expectancy to such an extent that immortality seems to be within reach. As in the biblical story of Creation, humankind has once again eaten the fruit of the tree of knowledge. The consequences are well known.
In completely different yet related ways, the four artists in the exhibition address the concept of hybridity as “the spirit of our time.” Four artists, whose works are situated on the borderline between the organic and the technoid, deliver visions of the future, which, depending on one’s point of view, could lead to pleasure and delight in the aesthetic results or to fear of once again being banished from paradise.

The objects and installations by the Dutch sculptor Willem Harbers (b. 1967) are reminiscent of eccentric machines and other mechanical devices that appear retro and future-oriented at the same time. His works evoke ambiguous associations—from precision engineering tools to internal organs, from technoid apparatuses to organic formations.

The Ukrainian artist Aljoscha (b. 1974) uses viscous acrylic paint to create curious, seemingly organic figures and paints fantastic landscapes that oscillate between Surrealism and science fiction. Harbinger of a time in which the studio becomes a laboratory where artists create life?

The whimsical sculptural works by the German artist Ulrike Buhl (b. 1967) are likewise characterized by an organic—or rather biomorphic—formal language. We are dealing here with structures that appear to emerge out of themselves, as if they had an inner tendency to constantly develop further, driven by a mysterious inner force.

With her work I can’t see you(2019), Julie Hayward (*1968) implies that art has its own consciousness and even its own sense of sight. The work is comprised, however, of MDF, aluminum, and foam rubber—all inorganic materials that (according to current knowledge) cannot be brought to life. Simultaneously technoid and organic, masculine and feminine, the Austrian artist’s works occupy a category of their very own.

Festival opening: 5. + 6. September 2020
Sat: 11am – 7pm; Sun: 12am – 5pm
Festival duration: 7.- 29.9.2020
Open: Tue – Fri, 12am – 6pm, Sat 11am – 3pm

Pls bring your masks!

galerieprojektraumviktorbucher
a 1020 wien, praterstrasse 13/1/2
mob +43 (0) 676 561 988 0
projektraum@sil.at
www.projektraum.at

 Photo: WILLEM HARBERS
Monochronique, 2009
Steel, marble, wood, paint, pvc
61 x 69 x 45 cm

 

 

 

hybrids curatedby Wien

https://www.curatedby.at/

 

Willem Harbers at Projektraum Viktor Bucher

 

“Wesentlich formaler löst Gérard A. Goodrow die Fragestellungen rund um Hybrids. Im Projektraum Viktor Bucher experimentiert der amerikanische Kurator mit Lebensmittelpunkt in Köln mit vier skulpturalen Positionen. Neben einer sehenswerten Arbeit von Julie Hayward überrascht der Niederländer Willem Harbers mit modern interpretierter Steinskulptur, die vermengt mit gefundenen Objekten und neuen Materialien funktioniert.”

Kunstmagazin PARNASS

 

Willem Harbers at Projektraum Viktor BucherWillem Harbers at Projektraum Viktor Bucher