Paloma Varga Weisz: Glory Hole
Erika Hock: What Bananas Say
July 3–September 6, 2015
Salzburger Kunstverein
Künstlerhaus
Hellbrunner Straße 3
5020 Salzburg
Austria
Events
July 3, 6:30pm
Paloma Varga Weisz in discussion with Moritz Wesseler, Kölnischer Kunstverein
July 3, 8pm
Exhibition openings
July 4, 6pm
Erika Hock in discussion with Vanessa Joan Müller, Kunsthalle Wien
(as part of the Open Day, 5–10pm)
The Salzburger Kunstverein is pleased to present the work of Paloma Varga Weisz as its summer exhibition for 2015. Opening on Friday, July 3, the exhibition is titled Glory Hole and involves a site-specific, sculptural installation by the artist in the Main Hall of the Salzburger Kunstverein.
Paloma Varga Weisz’s sculptures, installations and drawings are characterized by allusions to art history and traditional means of figuration, recasting mythic or iconographic formulae in a distinctive contemporary language. Trained as a wood carver, Varga Weisz creates figures that draw upon a rich source of personal and broader cultural motifs. Her works could be described as compressing multiple references to diverse European arts and crafts, from those of the Middle Ages (woodcarving and polychromy, for example) to the sparing forms and manual procedures of Modernist practices. Meanwhile her work often incorporates a note of surreal fantasy in tandem with its eclectic historical influences, adding a distinctly contemporary tone—especially where we find the artist broaching topical, even taboo subjects.
For the Salzburger Kunstverein, Varga Weisz has undertaken local research for a sculptural project that alludes to local and collective histories, both recent and distant. Glory Hole occupies the Main Hall of the Salzburger Kunstverein, taking the form of a traditional hut from the Austrian countryside. The artist has adjusted and customized this structure by creating an installation within it, including objects she has crafted together with items chosen from the collection of Salzburg’s Haus der Natur. The public can view the interior of this sculptural-installation only by peering through the peep holes on the outer surface of the hut’s walls, in a process that dramatises the interplay of private and public.
Paloma Varga Weisz has presented many exhibitions around the world, including exhibitions at Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels; Sadie Coles HQ, London; Konrad Fischer Galerie, Düsseldorf and Berlin; Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin; Chapter, Cardiff, Hayward Gallery London.
In the Kabinett space of the Salzburger Kunstverein is a project by German artist Erika Hock, who is artist-in-residence at the Salzburger Kunstverein for June and July 2015. In this exhibition, Erika Hock engages with the designs of the unconstructed home for Josephine Baker, originally designed by Adolf Loos, as well as with so-called Shyrdaks, felt rugs, as they are produced in Kyrgyzstan. According to a Loos-ian principle of clothing, textiles and carpets are precursors of built walls, and this sentiment is played out by Hock in her exhibition.
Erika Hock, born 1981 in Kyrgyzstan (former USSR), lives and works in Brussels and Düsseldorf.
Both exhibitions curated by Seamus Kealy, Director, Salzburger Kunstverein.
