Karin Maria Pfeifer, Ellen Semen, Sula Zimmerberger

„She who took off to learn …”
flat1 from Vienna

Opening October 16, 8 pm
9 pm Presentation of the Vienna art room flat1

Opening Hours
October 17 – 31, Friday to Sunday 4 pm –6 pm

In October the FRISE annual program 2013 contains „Traversing the Gleicher – being a stranger in the outland“, and the three lady curators and organizers of the art room flat1 from Vienna are present. All three are artists.
“One main concern of this art room is to foster the interexchange between inter/national artists and to establish networks off the track of the commercially oriented gallery business.” (translated from: www.flat1.at )

Now the Vienna artists are once more travelling themselves and will talk about tours of artists in their roles as exhibitioners and organizers at the exhibition closing event in the FRISE on October 30.

The artists of the Vienna offspace flat1 pick up with their positions the subject of travel in a certain logical continuation. After all, they have dealt with the aspects of “Ac- and Deceleration” that show up on journeys in manifold facets.

To the artists travel means not only a physical, but also a mental relocation, a jump or an artistic discussion. Common to all, as such probably one of the earliest of mankind, is the desire to leave beaten tracks and gain new perspectives. Why else do people travel to the remotest corners of this planet, discover historic worlds of passed ages or erect artificial show constructs in visions of science fiction.
By means of artistic plowing the different aspects of travel from the re-interpretation of scruffy billboards to the self portrait as pictorial ostinato of a foto series, flat1 intends to carve out of its special bonus.

Mental as well as real delocation sharpen the awareness – partially up to the threshold of pain. Travellers ask questions about themselves and the world. They feel confronted with the finite nature of being and the relativity of the familiar life.

The British author Dan Kieran* describes a possibly resulting finding like this:
”Three men and their milk float embarked on an epic journey across England … Buying a 1958 decommissioned milk float on eBay, the team set off from Lowestoft to Land’s End. Relying on the milk of human kindness they were treated to tea and cakes by the vice president of the WI. They succeeded in blacking out a Cornish campsite whilst charging their float, stayed with the monks at Buckfast Abbey where they undertook a vow of silence, and drove five hundred miles to King Arthur’s birthplace, Tintagel, to find it was closed – all in the name of discovering lost England.”

Die daraus folgende mögliche Erkenntnis beschreibt der britische Autor Dan Kieran* so: “When you look up tot he stars or tot he far away suns in the sky at night and think that there are more of these in the universe than grains of sand on planet Earth, nobody will take amiss, if you clasp your hands before your face and start to scream, because Life is so abysmal and absurd.”

*(Dan Kieran, 2013: Slow Travel)

Endless roads and motorways, lined by banner ads, that look too much the same in all kinds of countries, filled with promises, desires and wishes. …only in Bulgaria and Romania they seem to stay empty, empty ad walls along the streets no perspective, not even unreachable lures.

Karin M. Pfeifer takes up this empty projection screen to tell her own stories.

Ellen Semen was born in Hamburg and studied fine arts and intermedial design. Today she lives in Vienna where she traced the footprints of several artists of the 20th century showing pictures of artists in vehicles. The found contemporary document based on photographies gains a new colorful dimension and materiality. Thus the pictures are portraits on the one hand and documentation become alive on the other.

In her series of photos „tourist“ Sula Zimmerberger shows a selection of self-portraits. They were taken on her art journeys between 2007 and 2013 – Art Basel, Frieze Art Fair, Artforum Berlin, Biennale Venice, Documenta etc. While reflecting and mirroring herself in the captured pieces of art, the artist also uses them as a setting for her self-staging.

Exhibition organization:
Sylvia Schultes: 0179-48 21 013
Mail: s.schultes@frise.de