Nikolaus Gansterer: Con-Notations

Artist Nikolaus Gansterer explores how the act of drawing can become a score, a tool for communication and an “instruction for action,” in relation with time, space, movement and imagination. His research explores our capacity to grasp and notate perceptions through a production of drawings, videos and installations.

How to perceive one reality through another reality? How to grasp that which is evasive? How to transcribe what is transient, contingent delicate or impalpable?

Con-notations includes the act of co-noting, of con-notating, in other words the process of annotating, and the creation of signs associatively transferred to the essential. For Nikolaus Gansterer modes of access to perception are a means of emancipation. The artist studies and works in a state of concentration akin to meditation, before transferring the elements of this tangible and immaterial reality into a system of signs. One could describe it as a sensitivity to the environment and a heightened watchfulness. Such a state of concentration enables him to record, capture, translate, transcribe and re-arrange these perceptible elements into forms that can be shared.

The exhibition regroups 11 bodies of work produced since 2002. They were created in the studio, or outdoors, while traveling or listening, by directly recording reality.

In the context of his residence at the Villa Arson, Nikolaus Gansterer explored the transient and the intangible, notably in his installations Contingent Agencies and Wall of Howness (2018), developed in collaboration with philosopher and sound architect Alex Arteaga, artist choreographer Lilia Mestre, art historian Sophie Orlando and artist Katrin Ströbel.

Nikolaus Gansterer (born 1974) lives and works in Vienna (Austria).

Curators: Sophie Orlando and Katrin Ströbel

This exhibition is organized within the context of a residence of the artist at the Villa Arson, with the support of the Regional Cultural Affairs Directorate of Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur.