Finissage with Performance & Sound-Intervention: 
Performance Intangible Care by Philipp Muerling &

Sound-Intervention COCOON by Rod Modell & Marit Wolters & Special Spring Drink (sponsored by DICK & STEIN GIN)

About the exhibition:

The selection of the three artistic positions – Evhen Bal, Marit Wolters & Philipp Muerling – for the exhibition Dinggewalten results from the special recognition of their artistic achievements as runner-ups of the PARALLEL VIENNA | Bildrecht YOUNG ARTIST Awards 2022.

In Bildraum 01, selected works come together to form an exciting, fluid and unconventionally balanced interplay. Shaped by various forces of things, each work follows its own idiosyncratic logic of material, relationships of movement and tension, places and narratives in very different ways.

Marit Wolter‘s multi-layered, sculptural wall and floor works – Slides, Seismic Friction and Home Grounds – develop their formal appearance from material-dynamic processes in which different architectural materials such as concrete, sand, marble powder, clay and acrylic milk interact in various combinations. In their formulated aesthetic presence, the sculptures retain their fluidity and immanent movement. The materials, mostly found on site, such as the sand of the Home Grounds sculptures from the houses of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, are a direct reference to the meticulous investigations into the aesthetic potential of the materials and their interactions with social and ecological systems.

Philipp Muerling‘s lines – in the drawings PurPur_d &_b, Intangible Care – Beginning and in the performance Intangible Care – are subject to the conditions, limitations and forces of his own body. Liberation and tension, slowness and unleashing set the indeterminate rhythm of the lines. Whether in large-format drawings on canvas or as a performance in an exhibition or public space – the struggle for expression, in defiance of barriers, is the guiding principle in his artistic exploration. Radical and unembellished, vulnerable and naked, Muerling shows that the body is still a social battleground.

Evhen Bal‘s sculptures – Nord Stream 2, Two octaves of kilometer zero, Suicide of russian culture, Moscow patriarchy & Will I have dinner tonight? – are part of his extensive anti-war object series Artifacts of Zero. The artist reconstructs relics collected on the Ukrainian front lines after the complete Russian invasion in 2022, projectiles and the remains of missiles or bombs with alienated, peaceful everyday objects, such as a fork, a piece of wood from a piano, a statue of Alexander Pushkin, and much more, thus marking the process of a hideously real disintegration. Transformed fragments of Russian incendiary devices are composed of painfully playful artifacts in artistic scenarios.

The very different worlds of things in the exhibition are formed and deformed by the effects of forces of fusion and violence, tension and liberation. The works also relate to each other in a partly heteronomous way and reinvent themselves in a beautifully disturbing balancing act. On display are objects which, although they assert their autonomous zones in which the forces at work are bundled together, are charged into a dialogical, tension-filled field. Each of the works is the bearer of a precise artistic narrative, each harbors a particular experience of conditionalities, physical resources, places and bodies.