NIKOLAUS GANSTERER tracing (in)tangibles

We cordially invite you to the opening of Tracing (in)tangibles, the artist Nikolaus Gansterer’s first solo show at our gallery in Vienna. Gansterer will transform the exhibition space into a hybrid of archive, laboratory, and workshop where the possible materialities of thought and perception processes will be explored and visualised.

A boundless curiosity and insatiable desire for research necessitate Nikolaus Gansterer’s transdisciplinary work, an amalgamation of science, philosophy, music, dance, and fine art. He is fascinated by the intangible and the ephemeral. How does thinking work and where does it take place? What role do sensory impressions, emotions, and bodily states play in this process? How do we relate to our environment and how do we perceive it? Gansterer explores these questions in the form of drawings, installations, performances, and video works.

Mental processes, moods, and sensations are recorded and materialized using a notation system of his own design. Regardless of common categories of thought or dichotomies, he questions the imaginary boundary between art and science. Similarly meticulous and intuitive is his search for overlapping areas where the two disciplines converge.

It is evident in the diverse and complex works exhibited that Nikolaus Gansterer sees our world as a complex frame of reference. He approaches this complexity not through reduction but by employing a variety of translation methods: sometimes solidified into the form of collages or drawings, sometimes fluidly in video works that seem to visualize a stream of thought, and sometimes only fleetingly in arranged objects that convey the continued presence of the artist.

Nikolaus Gansterer was born in Klosterneuburg, Austria, in 1974 and studied under Brigitte Kowanz at the Universität für angewandte Kunst in Vienna, where he has had several stints as a visiting professor. He has participated in numerous international solo and group exhibitions, including at the Albertina in Vienna, the Villa Arson in Nice, and the MARTa Herford Museum in Herford, Germany. He has realized comprehensive projects in the context of the Venice Biennial’s research pavilion, the Havana Biennial, or this year’s Sharjah Biennial. In 2018 he was awarded the MAC International Prize in Belfast.