The exhibition WUNDERWELT combines four contemporary, international artistic positions that capture the fantastical intheir works, thereby creating entire new worlds. In their processes, the method of building and collage play an important role. By piecing together fragments of reality and creating anew with the assistance of digital technology, realms of experience come into being allowing that which is familiar to be seen from an unusual perspective, appearing eerie at times, or magical at other times.
Julie Monaco’s works are reminiscent of atmospheric landscapes, of familiar depictions of nature. Yet what is allegedly natural is merely an illusion. Monaco’s images show an artificial, abstracted reality, digitally produced by mathematical processes. The depictions of nature are not based on any previous original image, rather they are generated entirely with computer software. Monaco’s newer series, also exhibited in Wunderwelt, refers to her previous works by revealing and exposing their underlying processes. In its outer appearance, the new series is however, only related to earlier works to a limited extent, since she now integrates an additional method into her artistic process, the term for this process being “non-photorealistic rendering” (npr). Furthermore, Monaco’s newer works are characterized by painterly and graphic elements interwoven with digital factors.
In Chloe Potter’s series Double Dare, anonymous figures, surrounded by a flood of everyday objects, appear to float in an undefined space – “an exploded diary of life” (Potter). In a collage-like process, the images are developed from constructed installations in combination with existing settings.With a focus on the illusory opposites, “natural vs. artificial”, the images play with contradicting elements to create fantastical scenarios. Hence the series makes such topics of estrangement and displacement its theme and demonstrates the failure at attempts to control ourselves and our environment.
Simona Reisch’sinstallations, Atomare Lurchecke (Atomic Dust Bunny Corners) and Staubfänger (Dust Catcher), composed of various cut-outs from photographs, attempt to direct the attention to the “Un-Stellen”, non-space, of the exhibition space. The amorphous forms, consisting of bodies and structures, climb the walls bringing art in all the nooks and corners of the gallery, where otherwise only dust would be found. The “Wandwucherung”, or wall sprawl, is at first recognizable as a combination of decorative elements and images of humans. Only after closer observation are the, at times, macabre aspects of the installation revealed. Reisch’s most recent photographic work shows small boxes, models that have the effect of being impervious, unusable stage sets. The models were original designed as props for video works; The videos were never realized, hence the models themselves became the main object of focus made accessible to the viewer through photographs that are larger than the original models.
Magda Tóthová’s installation In the Eye of the Cyclone allows the cyclone to appear as a utopian concept: not only as an act of destruction, but also as the opportunity for a new beginning. What ends as an earthly existence is formed into a new society within the cyclone. Out of the objects that have disappeared from the earth’s surface a new order with new laws is established in the eye of the cyclone, a place of peace and quiet. The exhibited “documents” consist of drawings, collages, photographs and videos and show what existed before the storm, the resulting destruction as well as the new beginning within the eye of the cyclone.