CT / Kostka Gallery / Pivot

Opening: 24 November, 7 pm
Exhibition duration: 24 November 2016 – 8 January 2017
Artists: Markus Hanakam & Roswitha Schuller
Curator: Christina Gigliotti 

To pivot is to rotate, to start in the center and change the path of orientation, movement, motivation.  

We pivot from representation.
We pivot from the present – it unravels.  

Drawn to the spectacle, the periscope, the kaleidoscope. Looking through, looking in, looking out and back again. Depth perception warps and distorts itself, and the uncanny hangs thick in the air like a velvet curtain. The exhibition Pivot, prepared by Markus Hanakam & Roswitha Schuller, places itself somewhere between the past and future, earth and cosmos. Hanakam & Schuller have been described as tricksters, however, the illusory elements of their work endeavor less to deceive, but instead to allow for an opening of time and space, and an escape from the linear marking of the former.  

In Eighteenth Century England, Sir Joshua Reynolds wrote Fifteen Discourses, a lengthy guidebook of artistic and stylistic “rules” for students of the Royal Academy (of which he was one of the founders) to follow. Though decadent in nature, which immediately dates the prose, when juxtaposed with the enigmatic moving images Hanakam & Schuller have created, the lines become more difficult to contextualize. Voices from the past bubble up once more and initiate themselves in the present. Mysterious imagery becomes familiar once marked with recognizable language. Like contemporary alchemists, the figures examine elements and concoct formulas with ingredients from their universe and ours.  

The pivot point manifests itself in the exhibition as a curious viewing cabinet placed in the center of the room. You are alone – where are you going?  

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Markus Hanakam & Roswitha Schuller (b. 1979, Essen, and 1984, Friesach) are a Vienna-based artist duo who have been working together since 2004 primarily in the realm of video, interactive computer applications, drawing, and applied forms of art. As artists and researchers, they are engaged in restructuring the visual art rulebook and creating their own visions of the world through their practice. Recent selected solo exhibitions include Cosmic Cathedral at Galerie Krinzinger in Vienna (2016), Zirkel & Drop at Galerie Clemens Gunzer in Zurich (2015), and Housing & Healing at Fabrika in Moscow (2015). They have presented their work in group exhibitions at Rencontres Internationales Festival (2016), Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin (2016), Fotogalerie Wien in Vienna (2015), and DEPO in Pilsen (2015).  

Open daily 1 – 8 pm and according to the evening program. Voluntary admission fee.

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MeetFactory is supported in 2016 by a grant from the City of Prague amounting to 10.000.000 CZK.
KT_CT - Pivot.pdf