How are you doing? Please come in. A step pyramid made of pickles. Three analogue clocks, none working, each one stopped at a different time. A small cabinet, complete with tschotchkes, film and a philosophical text, in Slovakian. All gathered together on a rectangle of black. The film is a meditation, on distance, death, and metaphysics, but above all on death. The question of mortality is here in various forms. Life is frozen the pickles, caught in their jar and unable to degrade, stacked up like batteries, but also in the clocks, so overtly not ticking. That the clock faces all register different times gives them a degree of individuality; not much, but as much as is enjoyed by gravestones, with their dates of birth and death. And above all in the video, with its tender shots of the hands of the artist’s grandmother, and the voice over by the artist’s uncle, all people who—one imagines—will precede us in crossing over to the other side. At first sight, this is a kind of thanatonic scenography. But it is entirely without melancholy. How is this possible? The answer is already in the recognition that this is a scene, a scene from a play. The artist is playing host, has set up a scene, has cued a conversation. And he wants you to go deep. This is a space not so much about death as it is against smalltalk. This is not art about death, but about impatience and warmth: impatience with privacy, boredom with coldness, for the cosmos, but against cosmopolitainism. This conversation can happen here, only once, only now. Now once again, how are you doing? 

Text written by Dr. Adam Jasper 

sub specie aeternitatis

rming to the point of iceless winters? 

Ice climbing seems so extreme that it can only be understood as a compulsion to overcome oneself, again and again. Every new route is like a demented 

The angel number 31 is said to symbolize inspiration and the courage to make new 

death ritual to attain some higher consciousness in an accelerationist samsara. 

beginnings. But more often than not, supposed new beginnings are only an escape 

Imagine a climber hacking into a frozen waterfall for a hold. At what point will the 

from an end that we don't want to face. The desire for new beginnings is a symptom 

ice yield and shatter into a million pieces, and when will extreme tendencies like 

of the search for something authentic in a boring dystopia. Every new beginning 

this drive global warming to the point of iceless winters? 

suggests a tabula rasa, a chance to make it better, but in reality the past is a moldy palimpsest that can never be fully purged. 

The angel number 31 is said to symbolize inspiration and the courage to make new beginnings. But more often than not, supposed new beginnings are only an 

In a godless world, we look for signs, meanings and synchronicity in the most 

escape from an end that we don't want to face. The desire for new beginnings 

mundane of coincidences. Angel numbers are another evidence of our desperate 

is a symptom of the search for something authentic in a boring dystopia. Every 

search for an organizing principle where possibly none exists, of our illusions of a 

new beginning suggests a tabula rasa, a chance to make it better, but in reality 

higher guidance in a world that is in reality ruled by the deep drone of absurdity. 

the past is a moldy palimpsest that can never be fully purged. 

The Sisyphean compulsion perpetually leads our struggle from phases of inspiration 

In a godless world, we look for signs, meanings and synchronicity in the 

to phases of disillusionment. This isn't such a bleak outlook, for the struggle itself 

most mundane of coincidences. Angel numbers are another evidence of our 

towards the heights is enough to fill one’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy 

desperate search for an organizing principle where possibly none exists, of our 

and so on. We die a million little deaths, all to be alive. 

illusions of a higher guidance in a world that is in reality ruled by the deep drone of absurdity. 

The Sisyphean compulsion perpetually leads our struggle from phases of inspiration to phases of disillusionment. This isn't such a bleak outlook, for the struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill one’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy and so on. We die a million little deaths, all to be alive. Text written by Tobiast Bätsch 

Add

Richard Blasko

Opportunities

For Artists

ArtConnect

Support