THE CITY AND ME
OPENING: 16.09.15, 19.30
OPENING at Atelierhaus Salzamt: 16.09.15, 18.00
EXHIBITION: 17.09 - 30.10.15
OPENING HOURS: M, T, Th & F | 13.00 - 18.00 & by appointment
Jonas Aničas [LT]
Martin Sturm [AT]
THE CITY AND ME is the third exhibition within the cope of CreArt, an international cultural co-operation network among midsize European cities that has received the support of the EU program Culture 2007-2013. The exhibition is a cooperation between Atelierhaus Salzamt, Kunstuniversität Linz, Kunstsammlung des Landes OÖ, Kunstraum MEMPHIS and bb15 - Raum für Gegenwartskunst.
Jonas Aničas' installations consist of different elements – combinations of found or recycled objects. The artist searches materials for his creation in the nature and peripheral town spaces: in forests, derelict buildings or abandoned spaces. However, all these zones are marked by human intervention – piles of discarded, redundant things that are destined to disappear. The objects that are displaced from human life become the author’s creative treasury. By depurating and releasing spaces, the artist collects and uses these objects in his works. The objects that have lost the material benefit become artifacts in the sculptor’s installations and take the artistic value. They are provided with second chance to live.
Martin Sturm works with cultural codes that we know: Star Wars’ R2D2 and C3PO. In his paintings these figures are rendered almost life-size in the dark, blackish landscapes, with red eyes staring at us. With piercing stares, they resemble formal portraits of war heroes, presidents, or knights. They too are like ghosts appearing from the darkened, mysterious landscape – a collective consciousness formed by American movie sagas – are they real? Or are they merely metaphors for our own childhood? Sturm’s paintings turn to architecture and nightscapes. With the low-contrast greys and bluish-blacks, the buildings and landscapes are barely visible except for the coloured dots of painted lights in windows of the houses and arched stained glass windows of the church. These are views of exclusion, as we do not know what is going on inside these warm interiors when we look at them from outside. Playing with night vision, Sturm introduces us to the uncanny; this is a familiar landscape but disturbed and haunting at the same time.