Curatorial / Press

So you're running in a best of three

at Argentinier Straße 40, 1040 Vienna

April 26–30, 2017

The exhibition So you’re running in a best of three assembles three works each by Katrine Bobek and Christian Mühlbauer. Following an initial ‘encounter’ at this year’s Rundgang at Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, the works presented here update this dialogue. Christian Mühlbauer shows three works, which are part of an ongoing series of discarded TV packagings with monochrome silkscreens. Using detritus of the printing process – a dark grayish blend of color remnants found in the silkscreen studio – the cardboard packagings feature aphoristic quotations taken from movies and other sources. In this way, they further reference the cinematic qualities of the packagings and open up a contrast between the language of the commodity, that consists of product type names and various abbreviations, and spoken language in cinema. Partially overwriting the once highly loaded surface of the packagings, the prints complicate and, at times, neglect readability. Instead, they urge the viewer to observe subtle oscillations between transparency and opacity. 

While Mühlbauer’s works are installed vertically and are, despite their sculptural features, installed to be viewed – very much like a TV screen – frontally, Katrine Bobek’s ceramics occupy the floor. [[Yet occasionally, as in letup, a series of glazed clay ‘bars,’ they connect to the walls and thus establish spatial relations. This is, however, rather a gesture of giving the objects an odd function, than being site-specific.]] Some of Bobek’s works feature various kinds of printed images and add another layer to the intimacy of the handcrafted objects that expose a sense of longing. Likewise, due to their organic forms and materiality, they provoke bodily relations with the beholder. In temper, a glazed ceramic frame with textiles and printed images, stitched together, Bobek also expands her sculptural practice to the medium of painting.

Text by Christoph Chwatal

Curatorial / Press

So you're running in a best of three

at Argentinier Straße 40, 1040 Vienna

April 26–30, 2017

The exhibition So you’re running in a best of three assembles three works each by Katrine Bobek and Christian Mühlbauer. Following an initial ‘encounter’ at this year’s Rundgang at Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, the works presented here update this dialogue. Christian Mühlbauer shows three works, which are part of an ongoing series of discarded TV packagings with monochrome silkscreens. Using detritus of the printing process – a dark grayish blend of color remnants found in the silkscreen studio – the cardboard packagings feature aphoristic quotations taken from movies and other sources. In this way, they further reference the cinematic qualities of the packagings and open up a contrast between the language of the commodity, that consists of product type names and various abbreviations, and spoken language in cinema. Partially overwriting the once highly loaded surface of the packagings, the prints complicate and, at times, neglect readability. Instead, they urge the viewer to observe subtle oscillations between transparency and opacity. 

While Mühlbauer’s works are installed vertically and are, despite their sculptural features, installed to be viewed – very much like a TV screen – frontally, Katrine Bobek’s ceramics occupy the floor. [[Yet occasionally, as in letup, a series of glazed clay ‘bars,’ they connect to the walls and thus establish spatial relations. This is, however, rather a gesture of giving the objects an odd function, than being site-specific.]] Some of Bobek’s works feature various kinds of printed images and add another layer to the intimacy of the handcrafted objects that expose a sense of longing. Likewise, due to their organic forms and materiality, they provoke bodily relations with the beholder. In temper, a glazed ceramic frame with textiles and printed images, stitched together, Bobek also expands her sculptural practice to the medium of painting.

Text by Christoph Chwatal