After 2015 and 2017, BURN-IN invites in July and August 2019 to the 3rd International Summer-Exhibitions in Vienna and presents two fascinating exhibitions on the focus theme GreenART. Seven artists from Norway, Germany, Poland and Slovakia inspire with their highly diverse positions.
July is all about monumental art. In this exhibition, nature reveals all its sensuality and attractiveness, touching the soul and spirit of each.
The more we know and understand the nature around us,
the more we enjoy and respect ourselves.
Renaturalization of the urban
The imposing, highly delicate wooden works of the Norwegian Janka Bertelsen generate direct attention, put the viewer straight under their spell. In the sensual wooden pictures, the artist reveals the essence of the elements in a radically abstract way and makes them visible and tangible for many nature-loving, empathetic people. She develops her motif ideas from the four natural elements of fire, water, earth, air and forms them into unique pictorial worlds by merging material and motif into a perfect unity in a way that has never been seen before. In doing so, she exposes grains and lifelines step by step and creates relief-like surface structures that cause some appearance with an extraordinary three-dimensionality.
The powerful wooden bodies, some of which are more than a hundred years old, spread lasting authority and reveal completely new perspectives on the elemental-organic.
The dynamic interaction between the artist and the material wood is discharged in unique one-of-a-kind pieces with magical aesthetics and great sensual appeal with a realistic, yet at the same time romanticizing view of nature. Memory and longing images, from which a meditatively soothing and at the same time energetic-stimulating effect emanates, conquer space and time.
Weighty works of art that seduce to the haptic and visual dialogue and beyond spray an inspiring feeling of well-being .
The monumental, strong bronze, steel and wood sculptures by Slovakian Ladislav Černý, whom BURN-IN will represent permanently in German-speaking countries from July 2019, provide a strong counterpoint to Bertelsen's wood works. The current Zungen-Serie (Tongues series), with the large-scale, striking, often provocative works, additionally fires and makes the viewer uneasy, in some probably even insecure.
The haptic is the focus of both artists, both materially and symbolically. In Černý's lively, expressive works, the tongue appears as the main protagonist, embodying the tool for speaking, for making contact, for self-expression, and considered a symbol of the male sexual organ. Fertilizing, creative not exclusively aimed at the spiritual.
With this, Černý challenges the viewer, draws him under its spell, appropriates him and does not let him go. Here love meets suffering and pain, sexuality meets morality and permissiveness, closeness meets distance, the convoluted meets the clear. The massiveness of the large-scale works and the dramatic colors signal weltschmerz (world-weariness) and determination.
Snapshots of daily life
In the sculptural work, Černý also deals with the human condition, playing with the resistance and malleability, the warmth and coldness of the materials used. One can always sense the artist's liveliness and sensitivity behind all the monumentality and expressive directness. He shares his fate with the viewer and lets him participate directly in moments of happiness and drama.
Černý tries to avoid any influence or paradigm. He tells overwhelming stories of "ordinary" people in the normal, hectic daily life, with meditative component for personal reflection.
