Christian Egger; Untitled, EES (A&Z); 2021; installation viewChristian Egger; Untitled, EES (A&Z); 2021; Glas vase, coca cola bottle, coca colaChristian Egger; Untitled, EES (A&Z); 2021; Glas vase, coca cola bottle, coca cola; detailChristian Egger; Untitled, EES (A&Z); 2021; 13 c-prints; size variable; installation viewChristian Egger; Untitled, EES (A&Z); 2021; detail
The exhibition “Eyes, Ears, Screens! (Angst & Zeit)” by the Vienna-based artist Christian Egger presents, among other things, a large selection of a series, consisting of numerous copies in DIN A4, for which he used drawings painted with ink cartridges as a template.
The deliberately chosen limitation to A4 and ink in the work process accelerates, limits and controls an expressive painterly act.
The continuous continuation of this se- ries of sketches over several years resulted in an archive of approx. 4,000 drawings, a naive vocabulary of lines and shapes, de- veloped from intensive occupation with and with the joy of quoting the formal language of the abstract avant-garde. These are then hung on large-format canvases, mirrors, HD screens or, as in the context of this opening exhibition, in the rooms of the AAAA gallery in large areas and in accordance with the sprayed wall background.
Furthermore, two audio tracks reproduce two texts that diverge from one another, one of which explains the exhibition content in English (Miriam Stoney) from the perspective of abstraction and its effects, while the other describes the same exhibition in German (Ruth Weismann) from a figurative perspec- tive. Different references and links within the texts, to works occurring in the exhibition, including the acoustic speech works them- selves, allow the respective mediation ten- dencies of the audio pieces to compete and cancel out. Sentences like: Egger doesn ́t show us what happens at AAAA, but what happens at AAAA, when AAAA shows Egger., on the one hand, and: But when I say eyes, ears and screens have forever fallen into one another and that there is a mass of episte- mological evidence for such a claim, can this truism be objected to or at least qualified in a non-trivial way? calibrate the contrasted ho- rizons of meaning in front of which the artist designed the exhibition. A three-part series of circular floor works made of the materials sand, coal and chalk, in turn, works along the presentation at the location of their previous installation and at the exposed boundary between sculpture and documentation. A multi-layered series of artistic considerations determines the way in which the work and content are framed.
“Eyes, Ears, Screens! (Angst & Zeit)” could therefore also be seen as an attempt to draw attention to the different elements of this frame. In its conception, this exhibition holds back things as well, as it addresses and presents them.
