calendario eventi  :: 

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6/10/2008

Two exhibitions

Christine Konig Galerie, Wien

Micha Payer + Martin Gabriel

"The flower, the rat, the child, the pencil sharpener, the astronaut, how do these beings and objects come together to form a unity – it would, of course, seem to be more easily possible in their art than in the world of linguistically ordered categories ...

The artistic works of Micha Payer and Martin Gabriel make it possible to combine one category with another in a playfully simple way: living things with objects, natural things with artificial things. However, the aim of doing so is not to set up a surreal alternative world, but rather to re-create the factual world, one in which it is possible to be different.

Their art is communication, i.e. something created for beholders, including themselves. Yet the communication does not proceed via perception, but rather takes the form of perception directly. What is perceived and experienced inwardly forces its way out and there becomes crossed with the world, which already exists there a priori, pre-scribed – as a sign, as writing, as an image: the material is drawn from articles from encyclopaedias, photographs, drawings from natural history books, children’s books or young people’s encyclopaedias. However, it is then relayered, piled up in a heap, or put together as a bed which retains the silhouettes of the sleeping family. Or clearly separates them from the mundanity by which they are otherwise devoured.”
(Quotation from fading by Ferdinand Schmatz, 2008)

Third Room:
SAMI AL TURKI lifts

Sami Al-Turki, 1984 born in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
He studies photography at the American University in Dubai.

„...it all started in September 2007, when I began picking up hitchhikers in Dubai, taking them where they needed to go, either to work, home or to visit a friend. In other parts of the world, hitchhikers would be a mix of social class types, but there these people are all migrant labourers from India, Bangladesh, Pakistan - now working at the large construction sites of Dubai, ...“

The young Saudi Arabian artist Sami Al-Turki began documenting the life of these migrant labourers in the Arab Emirates. This is not done in a conventional way. The hitchhickers picked-up by Sami Al-Turki play an active role in his artwork: in return for the service, they receive a disposable camera in order to document their everyday live and all the aspects which are important for them.

Sami Al-Turki takes photographes from the workers as well, making portraits of them. During the next meeting they exchange the images: a longing for their home country but also a pride for the enormous skyscrapers constructed by them are the most common motives thus allowing an authentic insight in the (camp-)live of those men who act as both - objects and artists in Sami Al- Turki’s ongoing project.

Opening: October 7, 2008, 7 - 9 pm

Christine Konig Galerie
Schleifmuhlgasse 1A - Vienna
Free admission

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