Reverberations of the Body in Contemporary Austrian Art
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Focusing on the medium of photography, the exhibition questions the technical and ontological moments of this medium, whose visual output constantly oscillates between reality and fiction, between what is culturally significant, concealed or unmasked. Issues of the self and its gradual replacement through various objects, props and prostheses have permeated photographic art since the 1980s. With the support of theorists like Judith Butler or Slavoj Zizek, the physical body has been unmasked as a cultural construct, whose sexual identity is merely one component of the overall functioning of the subject within society. In the field of art, one of the prevalent issues regarding the body metaphor deals with the process of visualizing the other self, which goes beyond the representation of typical female or male characteristics and crosses the boundaries of what is anatomically possible and culturally, as well as socially, feasible. Jacques Lacan's mirror provides the central moment when the subject perceives its reverse, other identity. It can be seen as the starting point for reflection of photographic dispositions of the self, its visual alterations, distortions and cultural forms of recognition. Props & Prostheses shows the works of Austrian artists Sabine Bitter, Helmut Weber, Gyula Fodor, Sonja Gangl, Iris Klein, Ursula Mayer and Markus Schinwald, and their approach to the limits of physicality and the human condition.ΓΏ Props & Prosthesis, opening 19 October, Jelovskova kapela at Grad Kodeljevo