Martin Beck, Sung Tieu, and Philipp Fleischmann

Salzburger Kunstverein proudly presents its summer program, featuring two new exhibitions.

echo*, a collaborative endeavor by Martin Beck and Sung Tieu, fills the Grand Hall and the Ring Gallery, while Flashes of Resilience by Philipp Fleischmann occupies the Studio Space.

Martin Beck, Sung Tieu: echo*
Grand Hall

The summer exhibition echo* interlaces the artistic practices of Martin Beck and Sung Tieu. The exhibition creates an environment where the resonance of sound meets the solidity of institutional infrastructure, delving into temporal and spatial contexts at the same time.

Central to the exhibition is a collaborative sound installation by Beck and Tieu in the corridor enveloping the Kunstverein’s main exhibition space. The installation features an intricate network of 28 speakers arranged to produce a continuous sonic environment. 

Sung Tieu, known for her minimalism-critical approach, explores the tensions arising from design and its social application. Tieu contributes two digital clocks, each set to different time zones linked to incidences of Havana syndrome around the globe. As a new commission, she produces a text-based work as part of her series “Newspapers 1969–ongoing” that intertwines personal biography and the Kunstverein’s institutional mechanics. The newspaper serves as a sculptural and textual element blurring the lines between the archival and the immediate, the factual and the imagined.

Martin Beck’s practice is deeply engaged with processes of imaging, broadening our understanding of visual and auditory cultures. The main reference point for his most recent body of works is a series of eleven vinyl records titled “environments” released between 1969 and 1979 as psychoacoustic tools designed to enhance productivity and well-being. Building on this exploration, he contributes four large-scale drawings adorned with fern foliage that probe the themes from sites to sounds, tasks, and time. Additional works cut into the record series’ covers to highlight the visual and verbal dimensions associated with the paradoxical pressures of self-care and self-control in contemporary capitalist culture.

Curated by Mirela Baciak.

Artist talk: July 13, 2024, 12pm
Gabrielle Schaad (ZHdK Zurich) in conversation with Martin Beck and Sung Tieu.

Philipp Fleischmann: Flashes of Resilience
Studio Space

Philipp Fleischmann’s artistic practice challenges traditional forms of filmic representation, opting for strategies that emphasize the undefined and the obscured through the lens of queer abstraction. Fleischmann’s approach often involves the development of site-specific cameras, tailor-made for each project to explore and reflect the nuanced physical and cultural dimensions of various institutional spaces.

For Flashes of Resilience at Salzburger Kunstverein, the artist developed a new looped 735 cm long film sculpture, where the 16mm filmstrip carries various conceptions that sidestep traditional frame inscription, hence accentuating the dynamic and ever-changing perception of the visuals. The title’s flashes are not merely visual but integral to the narrative and thematic depth of the work, embodying moments of intensity and disruption that resonate with the overarching theme of resilience. The attention to color, light, and spatial arrangement encourages constant sensory shifts and reflects the effort and resilience needed to navigate the complexity of attribution and the ability to act.

This seventh iteration in a series of film sculptures incorporates a new design and conceptual framework, progressively interrogating and expanding the expressive potential of analog film. The sculpture at Salzburger Kunstverein introduces a new form and a high projector setup, altering how the film interacts with the surrounding space. These modifications transform the visual and auditory experience, highlighted by the classic projector’s distinct sound, adding a layer of cinematic ambiance to the space.

Curated by Mirela Baciak.

For additional program details and updates, please visit our website.