“The exhibition grows out of an irritation that appears to shadow my life or that again and again interrupts my considering, with one thing that’s really fairly alien to me, and that factor is conflict.”
—Ariane Mueller
Ariane Mueller’s preoccupation with conflict, which is on the coronary heart of the exhibition “Fish are folded into the ocean simply as the ocean is folded into fish”, has a protracted and sophisticated historical past. A long time in the past, within the early Nineteen Nineties, she got here into contact with the battle in Yugoslavia by way of her work on the artwork journal Artfan (1991–1996), which she edited along with the artist Linda Bilda. Slovenian writers wished to put articles in Artfan during which they known as for arms provides to their nation in assist of its conflict with Serbia. Not sure the way to deal with the scenario, the artists travelled to Zagreb shortly after the conflict started. As a delegate to the United Nations for a few years, Mueller was later additionally confronted with the Iraq Battle.
The preparations for the present 7 rue des Grands Augustins (2023) at Schiefe Zähne in Berlin, which served because the mental foundation for the exhibition on the Secession, coincided with the outbreak of the Ukraine Battle. The artist was staying in Paris on the time, the place she spent a whole lot of time outdoors the studio on the Rue des Grands Augustins that Picasso had rented particularly for the aim of realizing his bold work Guernica (1937). The portray in an unusually expansive format was his response to the Spanish Civil Battle (1936–1939); to Mueller, it represents the artist’s private resolve to take a stand in his work in opposition to conflict, in addition to for what has since typically been described because the futility of such an effort.
“Fish are folded into the ocean simply as the ocean is folded into fish” is split into two spheres dealing with one another that Mueller associates with conflict and peace, respectively. Within the former, she presents new large-format depictions of pure sceneries. The artist sketched them round Vienna and in Styria or took inspiration from footage by the Chinese language painter Shi-Tao. They present numerous paths that lead out into the countryside—incorrect paths, because the artist notes. The photographs illustrate the propensity to reply to the confrontation with conflict by withdrawing from the centre into seclusion, into silence. Or, in an prolonged sense, by avoiding the engagement with modern contradictions and political questions and grappling with timeless questions particular to portray as a substitute. The artist essentially questions the potential of such a withdrawal. Battle is folded into us like we’re folded into conflict.
To make the landscapes, Mueller taught herself the graphical brushwork of Paul Cézanne, who, when he was the identical age as she is now, labored in an isolation he himself deplored. The artist describes it as studying a brand new language—a language from the heyday of portray on the verge of abstraction—which she subsequently tries to talk. To extend the space between the work and her personal individual, she used a six-foot-long brush deal with, a tool that suggests a sure lack of management and experimentation along with her personal attain and vary in composition and painterly execution.
The photographs—Mueller thinks of them as drawings—are sketches relatively than totally realized, with deliberate blanks, but because the beholder approaches the works, they reveal themselves to be dense with scumbled layers of paint disintegrating into summary color fields and uncovered sections of pencil sketch. A pc animation of painted choreographed ink dots from 2023 is projected onto the photographs; bobbing and throbbing, they add a nervous power that disrupts any contemplative immersion within the portray.
In distinction with the speechlessness and isolation of the pure scenes, the “peace” part presents movies that inform tales of collaborative motion that’s manifestly not purpose-driven. Created between 1988 and 2023 for numerous exhibitions, they’re projected on room dividers organized to type the star constellation of 8 April 2025, 9 pm, in Austria. Among the many motifs are runnels of water trickling down a practice window, a tennis match in a abandoned schoolyard, the mascot of the Edo-Tokyo Museum launched into the road whereas the museum was closed, the occasions on the first of Might in Berlin-Kreuzberg. Or an alternate newscast of the station Lokal TV. Established by Mueller now and again of the exhibition VideoKanal, it was produced by artists from Vienna and Berlin for 3 days in the course of the run-up to the 1995 Austrian nationwide elections and concurrently screened at greater than ten venues in Vienna. One in every of her contributions exhibits the photo voltaic eclipse on the afternoon of the day of the printed. Most of the movies are knowledgeable by the spirit of Berlin within the Nineteen Nineties, when the artist moved to the German capital to arrange collaborative areas within the precarious constructions of the time. The movies present actions that individuals can interact in when there isn’t any want for results-oriented work, no urgency, leaving room for experimentation, for energetic engagement in various causes, at no cost time, for “non-work.” When folks perceive themselves to be part of a world that’s an energetic a part of them in flip. What artwork can do in a recent world in disaster—that’s the query that looms in each side of the exhibition.
at Secession, Vienna
till August 31, 2025
