Beziehungsfelder

FOTOGALERIE WIEN

Nikolaus Gansterer

Nikolaus Gansterer
Apollon Glykas & Ilias Sipsas
Simona Obholzer
Julian Rosefeldt
​Ksenia Yurkova

​Existence does not unfold in isolation, but rather in relation to others. People, things, and the environment are embedded in a network of complex and dynamic relationships. Through continuous processes of action and interaction, these relationships are constantly shifting. Identities are formed, stability emerges, and dependencies or ruptures arise. Within this network of relationships, individuals are confronted with questions and possibilities concerning responsibility, decision-making, and boundaries. The multimedia artists in this exhibition address various aspects and constellations of this theme. Some place artworks or performative actions in relation to things, materials, bodies, space, the gaze, and/or the viewers. Others engage in the collaborative process of artistic collaboration. Still other works explore how people are shaped by their relationship to history, culture, and politics, and what tensions can arise between personal memories or experiences and public structures.


In his video work *untertagüberbau*, Nikolaus Gansterer presents a three-channel installation that combines animation, live drawing, lecture-performance, and studio-based experiments. Around a kind of laboratory table, the work unfolds as a continuous flow of gestures and images, in which drawing becomes a method of thinking, testing, and negotiating unforeseen relationships between materials, bodies, and environments. In a critically playful engagement with the visual languages ​​of scientific experiments, Gansterer transfers them into new contexts using artistic means. He uses paper, chalk, water, glass, organic elements, and living beings—such as snails—and investigates processes of observation and transformation. These actions form a shifting network of relationships characterized by contact, movement, and temporal superimposition. * untertagüberbau *—underground work (invisible thought processes) versus architectural superstructures—provides the foundation for constantly changing contingent relationships, nonlinear perception, and associative thinking. 
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Apollon Glykas

Apollon Glykas places images from two series in dialogue. Internally shows photographs of a wedding, a celebration, and a family gathering. Due to a technical error, these private photos are blurry and therefore unsuitable as mementos. The scant details reflect the workings of memory, which doesn't hold onto anything permanently but is shaped by ever-changing experience. The serial repetition of the images makes the same scene appear increasingly blurry and distant each time. In Timeline, nine identical photographs of a wedding from the same archive are positioned linearly and partially overlap. They are viewed like a film, albeit one that repeats the same moment. In both cases, the memento no longer functions as a reliable document of an event; rather, the relationship between time, memory, and representation is renegotiated.

Ilias Sipsas

Ilias Sipsas presents the large-format triptych Familia Santa , created from the décollage of a black-and-white photographic negative from a found archive. Through processes of cutting, shifting, and reassembling, an everyday scene is fragmented. These interventions disrupt the temporal continuity of the photographic moment, generating a spatial and irreversible shift in which gestures, bodies, and fragments hover between appearance and disappearance. Positioned between photography and sculptural construction, the triptych reflects an ongoing investigation of the analog image as a site of transformation. By treating found photographic material more as raw material than as documentary evidence, the work proposes a new dimensional condition in which fragmentation, scale, and spatial perception reconfigure how photographic images occupy space.
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Simona Obholzer

In a multi-part installation, Simona Obholzer critically reflects on the standardized design of urban spaces. A 7-meter-long sheet of paper, untitled (ground) , is printed with an urban floor covering. At the end, the paper rolls up, as if the ground were withdrawing or reforming itself. Simultaneously, the work alludes to the endlessly reproducible and ecologically unsound laying of such surfaces. The 3D video animation Park explores the interplay between analog and virtual spaces. Physical spaces today often originate digitally—for example, as renderings. Digital aesthetics and material appearance are mutually dependent: In the virtual realm, textures create a connection to the haptically experienced world, while built spaces increasingly adopt the smooth surface of digital image spaces. In the video, animated spheres roll through an empty, undefined environment; their surfaces display materials used in urban open space design. Unlike in 3D programs, in Park an individual, imperfect quality breaks through the uniformity of designed open spaces. Obholzer suggests reflecting on the importance of physicality in an increasingly digital world, which is given a new dimension by the square piece of art turf with a human imprint, my own private green .

Julian Rosefeldt

Julian Rosefeldt 's 13-channel film installation Manifesto (2015) is an homage to the vibrant tradition and literary beauty of artists' manifestos, ultimately questioning the role of artists in contemporary society. Manifesto draws on the writings of Futurists, Dadaists, Fluxus artists, Suprematists, Situationists, Dogme 95, and other artistic groups, as well as the thoughts of individual artists, architects, dancers, and filmmakers. Through the abridgment, condensation, and combination of original texts from various manifestos, Rosefeldt created 13 spoken text collages, which he allows people in today's working and living environments to speak. Cate Blanchett, with impressive versatility, embodied 13 very different characters—including a teacher, a puppeteer, a news anchor, a factory worker, and a homeless person. Manifesto explores whether the statements and feelings of these manifestos, written with passion and conviction, have stood the test of time, and whether the dynamics between politics, art, and life have changed. Manifesto establishes connections between people, between past and present, and between art and life. 

Ksenia Yurkova

In Ksenia Yurkova 's video "Post-Iron," the relationship between humanity and culture/history, as well as questions of cultural responsibility and their impact on political processes, are addressed. Interspersed with digitally constructed, scientifically styled objects and historically and geopolitically charged landscapes that also explore the relationship between humanity and nature, several "experts" and scientists appear. These individuals discuss (not only Russian) history, politics, the relationship between science and ideology, and visions of the future. On the one hand, there are historical figures who speak to us through photographs and voiceovers, delivering statements that are partly derived from the utopian thinking of the early Soviet era. On the other hand, there are contemporary scientists who initially appear serious, critical, humanistic, or progressive, but whose sometimes exaggerated and absurd formulations undermine their credibility. Post-Iron is a political, provocative satire that critically questions the "omniscient" expert – a figure who often does not contribute to knowledge but can lead to subversive affirmation and affective glorification of conspiratorial narratives. (Petra Noll-Hammerstiel)

Opening:  4 May 2026
Duration: May 4, 2026 - June 13, 2026

FOTOGALERIE WIEN
Association for the Promotion of Art Photography and New Media
Währinger Strasse 59 / WUK, A–1090 Wien / T: +43-(0)1-408 54 62 
[email protected] / https://www.fotogaleriewien.at
Di u. Fr 14–19 Uhr, Mi u. Do 12–19 Uhr, Sa 13–17 Uhr / An Feiertagen ist die Galerie geschlossen.

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