CATFISH
9/12/2020 — 13/02/2021
When we think about Fallahpisheh and Thurman’s works together, we come up against the idea of the hero. It may sound absurd, but it’s where the works meet. Whereas Fallahpisheh makes recourse to fables and reduces his actors to a cast of mice, cats, dogs, and humans, Thurman puts a mask on his figures. Or is he taking it off? Their power comes from socially constructed ideas of masculinity. Their weakness is that they’re not allowed to talk about it, not allowed to reveal grief or rage. These tensions discharge in violence or even withdrawal. The figures in both Fallahpisheh and Thurman’s works are haunted by their own ghosts, by past selves, their origins and traumas. Of course, the self-portrait also comes into play here, too. Both are speaking about themselves. But even more so, they’re opening themselves up, making themselves vulnerable to produce a kind of critique that doesn’t stand apart from them but is credibly formulated with them. It’s about each of our struggles to find inner peace in a society that’s constantly entertained and alarmed, overly critical and uncritical at the same time; a society where the constant quest for attention collides with ever-shorter attention spans. It’s time to rebel.
An der Hülben 3, 1010 Wien
Sophie Tappeiner
SOPHIE TAPPEINER is a Vienna-based gallery that opened in May 2017. It is a critically engaged space which has developed a strong focus on intersectional feminism, the body and how our being relates with and impacts on the world around us. The aesthetic of the program is based deeply within the logic of each artist’s practice yet shares a tendency towards explorational materiality and a strong sense of figurative presence.
