Acqua & Terra, Zemlja in Voda, Earth and Water as the origin of life, elements that come together in a mass to be shaped: the MUDS (MUseo Dolina San Dorligo della Valle) an open museum that houses works by international artists set up in the urban and rural landscape of the municipality of Dolina San Dorligo della Valle.
ARTISTS
Aldo Giannotti (IT), Gianmaria Gava (IT), Hana Usui (JP), Leopold Kessler (AT), Olaf Osten (DE), Michele Spanghero (IT), Michicazu Matsune (JP), Miriam Laussegger (AT) & Joonas Lahtinen (FI), Ryts Monet (IT) & Andrea Steves (US), Yoshinori Niwa (JP)
MUDS is a project created by
Pablo Chiereghin and from Contrada Teatro stabile di Trieste
Leopold Kessler
Rotana Fountain
Unauthorized intervention Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, 2007
HDV Video 07:13 min.
The artist has created a makeshift fountain in Sharjah (UAE) that leads water from the Rotana Hotel swimming pool through a pipe to the street. The water pressure was generated by the altitude difference. The fountain worked for about an hour until it was recognized by the hotel staff.
Leopold Kessler's interventions in legal systems, commercial services and public spaces are based on ingenious, dry and humorous observations of urban life and show a keen awareness of the mundane systems that keep today's society running. Kessler's works also offer a unique insight into psychogeography. He does not reorganize the city with the rhetoric of hallucinatory miracles or revolutionary romanticism, but through the perspective of work, infrastructure and maintenance and transforms these systems into a stage for urban black comedies.
Leopold Kessler (* 1976 in Munich, lives and works in Vienna) studied sculpture in Vienna, 2004 Diploma. Individual exhibitions among others - in Malmo Konsthall, Bunkier Sztuki, Krakau and Secession, Vienna; Group exhibitions in the Broad Art Museum, Michigan State University, Palais de Tokyo, Paris and de Appel, Amsterdam. Leopold Kessler took part in the Singapore Biennial 2011, 10. Lyon Biennial and Manifesta 5 in San Sebastian.
Yoshinori Niwa
Transporting puddle A to puddle B
Single channel video (10'53 min), 2004
Transport from pool A to pool B
Print, variable size, 2004
How are urban space and ethnicity related? Across the place where the Berlin Wall once stood during the Cold War, I transfer the puddle into another puddle with my mouth. As a Japanese artist, when I wonder how I can deal with these issues of the Cold War and the Berlin Wall, I felt that the only thing I could do was transfer a puddle in former East Berlin to a puddle in former West Berlin. Now, after the wall has been physically demolished and freedom of movement is fully established, I seriously wonder how I can deal with the repeated conflict between East and West as a Japanese citizen and try to see how I can address the historical memory of the wall of Berlin emerging again from the cross-border action of moving it with my mouth.
His practice takes the form of social interventions made through performances, videos and installations. His works all carry self-explanatory titles, similar to slogans, and are performed mainly on the street and in public spaces. His work has been exhibited internationally; recent group exhibitions include Historically Historic Historical History of Communism, Edel Assanti (2015), Setouchi Triennale 2016, Naoshima (2016), MAM screen Yoshinori Niwa Selected video works, Mori Art Museum (2017), steirischerherbst'18, Graz (2018), and his work is included in international collections including the KADIST Foundation, Paris / San Francisco, the Otazu Foundation, Spain, Wroclaw Contemporary Museum, Wroclaw, Mori Art Museum and more. Niwa lives and works in Vienna, Austria.
Aldo Giannotti & Pablo Chiereghin
A straight line through the planet
Single channel video, 2014
Still print
Ryts Monet & Andrea Steves
Esperanto EU Anthem
Video, Performed by Frans Poelstra, 2021
Ryts Monet & Andrea Steves
Word of the world, kuniĝu! (Speakers of the world, united!)
Union Flag
acrylic fabric, print, 150 x 100 cm., 2021
Word of the world, kuniĝu! it is a flexible and long-term artistic project that imitates and takes up the modalities of an ideological movement.
The UK's official exit from the EU in 2020 (Brexit) effectively removed the only native English-speaking country from the community and the continued use of English as a default language in the EU today appears more clearly to us as a paradox. reflecting an imperialist structure. Developed in collaboration with the Esperanto Museum in Vienna, each component of the work speculates on Esperanto as a neutral and common language: an alternative to the global and European use of English in order to generate greater social inclusion and cooperation between Villages. Reflecting on the divisions through language, linguistic imperialism and its drifts, Parolantoj de la mondo, kuniĝu! positions this moment as the one in which the countries of the European continent (including the United Kingdom) could realize a new transnational linguistic identity.
Ryts Monet (Enricomaria De Napoli), Bari, 1982, lives and works between Vienna and Venice. He studied at the IUAV University of Venice. His work explores geopolitical and cultural frictions, clashes, ruins, monuments and symbols of power that have a precise relationship with the present and with collective memory. His work has been exhibited in institutions such as: STEIRISCHER HERBT, Graz (2020), KUNSTHAUS DRESDEN, Dresden (2019); Q21 - MUSEUMSQUARTIER WIEN, Vienna (2019); 6. MOSCOW INTERNATIONAL BIENNALE FOR YOUNG ART, MAIN PROJECT, Moscow (2018); OFF BIENNALE CAIRO, Cairo (2018); MEDITERRANEA 18, BIENNALE OF YOUNG ARTISTS, Tirana (2017); KUNSTHAUS GRAZ (2016); ANTONIO RATTI FOUNDATION, Como (2016); STEDELIJK MUSEUM BUREAU AMSTERDAM, Amsterdam (2015); PAN, Naples, (2013); KUMU MUSEUM OF ART, Tallin (2011).
Andrea Steves (1983 Michigan, USA) is an artist, curator, researcher and organizer based in Vienna, Austria and New York, USA, whose recent projects explore capitalism, climate change, public history, museums and monuments. Andrea is co-founder of Museum of Capitalism, a public museum imagining the end of capitalism, which was the only 2016 recipient of the three-year Emily Hall Tremaine Exhibition Award, has been exhibited in various forms in New York, San Francisco, Boston , and Vienna. Andrea co-edited Museum of Capitalism, published in 2017 by Inventory Press and reprinted in an expanded edition in 2019. He has shown works and participated in international residencies, most recently Headlands Center for the Arts (California), Queens Museum (New York), The Luminary (St. Louis), Skalar Experimental Sound Art Residency (Iceland), Luminary Arts (St Louis), Bergen Assembly (Norway), Santa Fe Art Institute (Santa Fe, New Mexico) and HKW (Berlin). Andrea is a member of the editorial research group of MARCH: a journal of art and strategy, visiting scholar at the Robert Heilbroner Center for Capitalism Studies of the New School, New York, and visiting professor at the California College of the Arts, San Francisco. In Vienna, he is working with Enar de Dios Rodriguez as the Essential Services curatorial atelier, and is resident at the Impact Academy / Villa Shapira with Lukas Heistinger and Bernhard Garnicnig. In 2021, Andrea co-founded deurendis, an upcoming residency for artists and activists in the Catskill Mountains in New York, in support of post-studio and revolutionary practices.
Aldo Giannotti
An old petty-bourgeois dream that comes true only in its visual-literary sense.
Aldo Giannotti was born in Italy, has lived and worked in Vienna since 2000. Intrigued by constructs such as personal and cultural identity, collectivity and mechanisms of power, he often stages situations of visitor participation. By shifting and rearranging symbols it challenges the meaning of land and spaces as nations, institutions and individual positions.
His work has been presented in various contexts and institutions in Austria and internationally, such as: Albertina, Vienna / MUMOK, Vienna / Taxispalais Kunsthalle Tirol, Innsbruck / DonauFestival, Krems / Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna / LENTOS Kunstmuseum Linz / Kunsthaus Graz / Muzeum Sztuki, Lodz / Kunsthallen Nikolaj, Copenhagen / Kunstraum Niederösterreich, Vienna / Künstlerhaus, Vienna / Sammlung Essl, Vienna / CCC Strozzina, Palazzo Strozzi, Florence / Museum der Moderne, Salzburg / MAMbo, Bologna / ar / ge kunst, Bolzano / MUSA, Vienna / Artothek, Munich / In Between, Austria Contemporary (BKA collection) various locations / Fruchthalle Kaiserslautern / Forum Stadtpark, Graz / Fotogalerie Wien, Vienna / Projektraum Viktor Bucher, Vienna
AWARDS - 2020, Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant -2019, Austrian Graphic Art Award, Taxis Palais Kunsthalle Tirol, Innsbruck. - 2017, Pomilio Blumm Award, Milan. - 2011, Österreichtisches Staatsstipendium für bildende Kunst - Austrian government scholarship for visual arts. - 2008, Special mention by the jury of the Media Forum Moscow for A rewinding Journey. - 2007, Leone d'Oro at the Venice Biennale for "Posing Project B - The art of seduction" by Chris Haring and Liquid Loft. - Bank Austria Award 2002, Vienna
Michele Spanghero
When the Visible Horizon Still Meant the End of the Known World (2011–2021)
A diaphanous photograph (blurry or low resolution) of the sea places us in front of two backgrounds of color, which the viewer immediately identifies as the horizon line. Metaphor of our current blindness towards a broad and profound vision of the landscape, the image poses an (almost ontological) question on the horizon of human knowledge and on our current imaginative capacity.
The When the Visible Horizon Still Meant the End of the Known World project started in 2011 works on contemporary photographic imagery in dialogue with the iconographic legacy of the concept of horizon. On the occasion of the MUDS project, the artist created a version with the title of the work inscribed in the image, playing with the format of the advertising signs.
The artistic activity of Michele Spanghero (Gorizia, 1979) ranges from the field of sound art, to sculpture and photographic research in a versatile but coherent way, so much so that he received the nomination of “Best young Italian artist 2016” by the magazine Artribune. He has exhibited and performed in various international contexts such as Jardin des Tuileries (Paris, France), Le Centquatre (Paris, France), Hyundaii Motorstudio (Beijing, China), School of the Art Institute (Chicago, USA), Darb 1718 Center (Cairo, Egypt), Museum of Modern Art (Istanbul, Turkey), Ars Electronica festival (Linz, Austria), Technisches Sammlungen (Dresden, Germany), Italian Embassy (Brussels, Belgium), Festival Tina-B (Prague, Republic Czech Republic), Vžigalica Galerija (Ljubljana, Slovenia). Among the various activities in Italy we mention Mart (Rovereto), Palazzo Te (Mantua), Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria (Perugia), Galleria Civica (Modena), Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation (Venice), Temple of Hadrian (Rome) and the participation in the 16th Quadriennale of art (Rome).
Olaf Osten
Zone 006
Marker on the school map - 2017
Olaf Osten
Commuting 100 - Vienna, Danube Canal
Marker on pocket calendar - 2013
I am interested in universal and existential issues, my work usually expresses my respect for nature, so it seems impossible to me to avoid elements such as earth and water, because without them we simply would not exist.
Olaf Osten (* 1972 in Lübeck, GER) is a visual artist based in Vienna. His work starts mainly from drawing and is represented in the collections of eg. the Wien Museum, the International Peace Institute, the Complexity Science Hub Vienna and the Austrian Chamber of Labor. He has taken part in numerous international exhibitions and is active in a wide variety of interdisciplinary contexts, with collaborations including the Impulstanz Festival, Wiener Festwochen or mumok. In 2012 he received, together with Ernst Logar, the State Prize for the most beautiful books in Austria.
Gianmaria Gava
RED LINE
Gianmaria Gava
RED LINE
An unnatural disaster. A line that separates what was before from what is and will be.
The red line is a documentation on a moment of rupture between the environment and the production needs of the industry.
This project portrays Hungary's largest ecological disaster. A sludge tank, belonging to a private company, broke on October 4, 2010, contaminating an area of 40 square kilometers and reaching the Danube. One million cubic meters of toxic red mud, a mixture of lead and other heavy metals, flooded seven cities, causing nine deaths and hundreds of injuries.
Gianmaria Gava was born in Venice in 1978. Since 2004 he has lived in Vienna, working as a photographer and artist.
The main focus of Gava's artistic research is the impact of digital processes on our collective perception of the analog world. His works have been exhibited in several international exhibitions.
In 2018 Gava was the winner of the Sony World Photography Award, Architecture category.
Michikazu Matsune
Welcome Back to Earth (Speech Bubble Painting)
The quote "Welcome back to Earth" (from Michikazu Matsune's Speech Bubble Paintings series) refers to an event that celebrated the return of a NASA astronaut from space after making three laps around the Earth in 1962. Excerpt from context original, the message now invites the viewer to an absurd return to our planet, which we have never left.
Michikazu Matsune is an artist who uses different approaches ranging from theatrical representations, to interventions in public and private spaces, to the manufacture of artifacts for performative action. His personal approach, characterized both critical and playful at the same time, examines the tension around our cultural ascriptions and social identifications. Matsune was born in Kobe and lives in Vienna.
Miriam Laussegger & Joonas Lahtinen
out there
Miriam Laussegger & Joonas Lahtinen
out there
Miriam Laussegger and Joonas Lahtinen present two of the images they initially created for the exhibition project: explorations of place, landscape, imagination in public space (Vienna, 2019, commissioned by SHIFT / Basis.Kultur.Wien). Oscillating between reality and imagination, the images of Laussegger and Lahtinen play with our cultural ways of seeing and induce moments of contemplation, reflection and (unfamiliar) familiarity. They also draw on philosophical texts by authors such as Doreen Massey, Marc Augé and Thomas More.
JOONAS LAHTINEN (* 1984, A / FIN) is a Viennese installation and performance artist, theater scholar and lecturer-researcher at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. His art projects have been exhibited in institutions such as the Finnish National Gallery / Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art / Kiasma Theater, WUK Performing Arts Vienna and Brut Wien, and in festivals such as imagetanz Vienna, Freischwimmer-Festival (DE / A / CH), SOHO at Ottakring Vienna, HomeFest Bucharest, URB Urban Arts Festival Helsinki and STAGE Helsinki Theater Festival.
MIRIAM LAUSSEGGER (born 1980, Vienna) studied at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, the Facultat de Belles Arts in Barcelona and at the Kungl. Konsthögskolan in Stockholm. His artistic practice shows a different way of working in the fields of photography, installation, video, sculpture, screen printing and media art.
Aspects of his work are the analysis and deconstruction of material, technology and its structures. The interaction between text and art is also a central theme present in many projects. In addition to solitary work practice, he also collaborates with other artists for different projects, eg. the exhibition project out there in public space in Vienna with Joonas Lahtinen (2019, commissioned by the SHIFT Funding Program, City of Vienna). Furthermore, the collaborative way of working as an artist duo with Eva Beierheimer in a long-term cooperation results in many different projects (www.art-words.net). Miriam Laussegger has participated in international exhibitions and projects, as well as artist residency programs in Paris and Örnsköldsvik (Sweden).
Participation in exhibitions (selection): Austrian Cultural Forum London, Canakkale Biennale (Turkey), Dovin Gallery (Budapest), Norrtälje Konsthall (Sweden), Galleri Mejan (Stockholm) Croatian Association of Artists (Zagreb), Museum of Fine Arts Osijek (Croatia ), Kunstverein Medienturm GRAZ, Kro Art Contemporary (Vienna).
Hana Usui
Fukushima, 2019
(Courtesy Marcello Farabegoli Projects)
The works of the Japanese artist Hana Usui are dedicated to the effects of the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi reactor accident. In her work, the artist alternates drawing and photography, combining moments of manual skill with a pictorial reality. In the series “Fukushima” created in 2019, Usui addresses moments of the invisible that the nuclear catastrophe has caused and raises the question of how the landscape has changed over the years and how these changes affect our visual memory. Usui's black and white photographs are covered with a semitransparent paper crossed by black lines. This process results from Usui's drawings, in which she simultaneously exploits the photographic element by recording movements or processes as if it were frames or stills. The visual component of the cloud-like ink washings that transpire through the very thin layer of paper is replaced by the artist by the photographs, with which she verifies her testimonies made through the photographic device. He used this same technique in his 2018 series of photos in which he treated the death penalty in Japan under the title "Tokyo Koshisho". Although condensed into concrete images, Usui's photographic views allow the real motifs of the depicted environment to be recognized in a rudimentary way. In this way the Japanese artist problematizes the relationship of his compatriots with respect to phenomena charged with negativity that politics does not want to admit and therefore tries to banish them from public opinion. The artistic investigation of these issues often leads to forms of censorship. With his special technique Usui anticipates possible models of censorship and tries to use them by articulating the fundamental essence of Japanese thought.
Walter Seidl
Hana Usui studied art history at Waseda University and calligraphy in Tokyo. His abstract drawings are made with white or black oil paint, which he overlays with ink or photographs. Since 2014 he has been using his artistic vocabulary mainly to address injustices in the environmental, political and social fields. Exhibitions (selected): JapanUnlimited, frei_raum Q21 / MuseumsQuartier Wien (2019), Vienna, Show Me Your Wound, Dom Museum Wien (2018–19); Hans Hartung, Informel and its impact, The National Museum of Berlin (2010); Sensai, Residenzgalerie Salzburg (2009); Works on Paper, Manggha Museum of Japanese Art and Technology, Krakow (solo, 2009). Collections (selected): Albertina, Vienna; state art collections of Dresden; Graphic collection of the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts; Otto Mauer Collection, Vienna; The National Museums of Berlin; Vienna Museum, Vienna.