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 ist eine in Wien ansässige Galerie, die im Mai 2017 eröffnet wurde. Sie ist ein kritisch engagierter Raum, der einen starken Fokus auf den intersektionalen Feminismus, den Körper und die Beziehung unseres Seins mit der Welt um uns herum und deren Auswirkungen entwickelt hat. Die Ästhetik des Programms basiert tief in der Logik der Praxis der einzelnen Künstlerinnen und teilt dennoch eine Tendenz zu forschender Materialität und einem starken Sinn für figurative Präsenz.
CATFISH
9 Dec 2020 - 13 Feb 2021