JULIA HAUGENEDER (*1987, Vienna). Lives and works in Vienna
Julia Haugeneder produces millimeter-thin, rubbery layers of bookbinding glue, plaster, and pigment, which are first poured onto the floor and, after a drying period of about three days, folded into the aforementioned "packets."
The final result, thanks to Haugeneder's special folding technique, acquires a sculptural character and is subject to a number of factors that influence its surface texture, color, and stability. These include the floor, which serves as the base for the layers, the choice of color pigments, and the folding process itself: "It's a one-way street—once I start, I simply have to see it through," says Haugeneder, meaning: what's laid down, sticks. This certain unpredictability is also part of the appeal of her folded objects. Angelika Seebacher
CHRISTIAN HUTZINGER (*1966, Vienna). Works and lives in Vienna.
Where color and form meet and stand in radical opposition, paradoxically, encounters of soft symbiosis and only subtly competitive interplay emerge, for: as clearly as the individual bodies and planes appear to be separated from one another, they are nevertheless not in competition. Rather, conciliatory fields appear, which, in peaceful and humorous interaction with the surrounding space, become nothing less than independent places. Through the continuous, enamel-like uniformity of the surface and without a visible brushstroke, Christian Hutzinger initially denies any performative process within the painting process. The formal arrangement of the canvas initially removes painting from its temporal dimension, constructing it far beyond becoming and passing away. In this painterly temporal vacuum, it then falls to the compositions of the individual motifs to initiate movement and thus sequence, and further time through their relation to other motifs. Slowly, starting from precision and apparent clarity, the paintings thus work their way from the two-dimensional plane into three-dimensional space, and from there into the perception of the viewer.
Niklas Koschel