Art is a meeting zone. Whether sewing machine and umbrella meet on the dissecting table, Nanas cavort in the Tuscan garden or a painting is viewed by a person. This exhibition brings together the works of three artists and the various ways of reading and interpreting them. In the contact between the different artworks and their cosmos, there is room for new chains of association. In this structure, every line, every fold is a shared space of possibility – a shared space.
Alfred Rottensteiner studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, at the
HfbK in Hamburg and at Central Saint Martins in London. Painting is central to his artistic work, from which cross-space installations, videos and performances are created. “For me, art is something totally human. It is a tool for questioning a world that is constructed through the ability to think abstractly. For me, art is a link between human abstraction and a universal reality. In the artistic process, I actively enter into moments of being surprised. The finished artwork can then also do this with viewers. “Surprises are the starting point for revolutions,” says philosopher Christoph Menke. – “Everyday life is called into question, routines are broken up and an openness to new things can be cultivated.”
He lives and works in Vienna.
Käthe Schönle studied Fine Arts and Visual Communication at the Kunsthochschule Kassel, graduating in painting and illustration.
Her work has since been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions both nationally and internationally and is represented in private and institutional collections. Schönle has received several scholarships and grants, including the Art Prize of the City of Kassel.
For Schönle, art means transforming material and exploring the tension between content, aesthetics and physicality. Her interest in the hybrid, the ambiguous and the multi-layered runs through her entire oeuvre. Abstraction and figuration complement each other where the pictorial passages can be read in organic formations and conjectures of a figure or a landscape emerge, only to immediately evaporate again in the overall experience. Schönle offers simultaneous spaces of perception. The body is omnipresent in Schönle’s work, not only as a form, but also as conceptual content that crosses the boundaries between inside and outside. (Excerpt from a text by Paula Watzl / Cascade Collages, Viadukt ATTP Vienna 2021)
She lives and works in Vienna.
Famakan Magassa grew up, lives and works in Mali – confronted with rapid developments, traditions and resistance to modernity.
In his paintings, he skilfully moves between social satire and sensitive depictions of life situations and interpersonal relationships. He explores power relations, the pursuit of personal freedom, the need for connection, emotional turbulence and ambivalence.
Famakan Magassa, born in 1997, received his BFA from the Conservatoire Arts et Metiers Multimedia Balla Fasséke Kouyaté in Bamako, Mali, in 2018. In 2019, he exhibited for the first time in several institutional exhibitions, including presentations at L’Institut-Français du Mali and Fondation La Maison de l’Artiste in Assinie, Ivory Coast. In 2021, his works were featured in the exhibition “Hotel Sahara” at BETC, Paris, France. In 2022, Magassa made his debut in the USA with his exhibition SOIFS at the Albertz Benda Gallery, New York. In August 2023, Magassa was awarded the Grand Prize of the Norval Sovereign African ArtPrize. In September 2023 AG18 Gallery exhibited at the art fair “Art Vienna”.
The Dodo Project
Office for exhibition
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The DODO Project are Daniela Hahn and Andrea Lehsiak. In their curatorial practice, they deal with artistic strategies, historical realities, queer-feminist storytelling and reflect on the impact of exhibiting. Collaborative work and an experimental approach characterise their projects.
Daniela Hahn studied art history and history in Vienna and Trieste. After working for the Austrian contribution to the Venice Biennale, she was curatorial assistant at the SAMMLUNG VERBUND and researched the “Feminist Avant-Garde of the 1970s”, before working in exhibition management at mumok. Since 2019, she has headed the image archive of the Josephinum – Museum of Medical History Vienna. There she curates exhibitions between science and art.
Andrea Lehsiak studied information and media design in Schwäbisch Gmünd, Germany, and has been working as a freelance graphic artist and exhibition designer in Vienna since 2012. Her work focuses on knowledge communication, art catalogues and festival identities. In 2014 she founded the Institute of Applied Spaceshipping.
In 2011, they jointly registered the offspace “Schaukasten – Interessensraum für Zeitgenossenschaft” in the register of associations and curated exhibitions, readings and performances there. Since 2018, they have been curating, designing and realising art and art-related projects as “The DODO Project. Büro für Ausstellung”, curating, conceptualising and realising art and art-related projects. They curated the international group exhibition STONE TELLING at Kunstraum Niederösterreich (2019), the first exhibition at Queer Museum Vienna (2022) and AVANTI DILLETANTI at the Stadtgalerie Wien Museum (2023), among others.