During the press tour in the morning, not everything on the field worked as it should. The concept is quite tricky and technically only be mastered by Beloufa’s build-up crew of his own production company EBB. The individual stations in the room, which is only lit by the flickering screens and monitors, are called “Screen Talk”, “Cheat Island”, “Console of Quiz”, “Press Key Port”, “Hand of Vengeance”, “Tax Haven Roulette” and ” souvenir shop”. You solve game tickets for two euros, have to solve quiz questions and tasks at the “slot machines” and you can win real art. The whole thing is humorous and parodic and also an examination of the current NFT hype on the art market.
The Secession is also reacting to the pandemic period and the increasing shift of encounters to the web, said Daha in an interview with the APA. Beloufa is valued as an artist and, like everyone else invited, was given carte blanche, but the “Pandemic Pandemonium” he designed for Vienna, which is an extended version of an installation previously shown in Brussels (2022), is now also an opportunity Breaking down barriers and also bringing the gaming community into the house.
Hardcore installation art, on the other hand, awaits in the gallery on the lower floor: in “Elastic X”, US artist B. Ingrid Olson shows a group of sculptures that change four corners of an exhibition space, multidimensional photographic objects in which photography, installation and sculpture are combined, as well as the walls mounted small, irritating anthropomorphic ceramics. “It’s regarding seeing and being seen,” said curator Annette Südbeck. “It’s regarding the question of how does the body relate to space?”
In the Graphic Cabinet, the Secession is dedicating a small presentation to one of its first female members, Lieselott Beschorner, who was born in 1927 and has been a member of the artists’ association since 1951. “We want to express our great appreciation for them,” said Daha. “We see her as a visionary.” In fact, her fabric figures called Puppas, her small ceramic sculptures and an installation of intertwined fabric legs with shoes seem like anticipations of works by artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Sarah Lucas or Annette Messager.
A wall with one-second drawings, which was created very recently and whose creation is documented in the film “Sekundenarbeiten” by Christina Perschon, which is running on the screen, shows that the artist, who lives in a villa in Vienna-Gersthof full to the brim with her works of art, is still active. However, it has not been possible for her to leave the house for a long time, and Beschorner’s health has been affected by a recently recovered from corona disease, reported Daha. “But she is incredibly happy that she was allowed to come back to this starting point,” said curator Berthold Ecker, who brought the artist back into public awareness with an exhibition at MUSA regarding a decade ago. A publication on the exhibition is due to appear in August.
(SERVICE – “EBB & Neïl Beloufa: Pandemic Pandemonium”, “B. Ingrid Olson: Elastic X”, “Lieselott Beschorner: In the Breath of Time”, exhibitions in the Secession, June 29th to September 4th, Tue-Sun 10th –6 p.m., )
