The Chasm at Franz-Josefs-Kai 3/17, Vienna


The Chasm / organized by Yves-Michele Saß

Aline Bouvy, Viktor Timofeev, Stefan Fuchs, Ivan Pérard, Aniara Omann, Jannis Marwitz, Minda Andrén, Elisabeth von Samsonow, Lu Yang, Laurence Sturla, Yein Lee, Arik Brauer

2.5. - 2.6.2019

Franz-Josefs-Kai 3/17, Vienna


The Chasm, 2019, installation view, Franz-Josefs-Kai 3/17, Vienna


Aniara Omann, untitled, 2018



right: Minda Andrén, Death Dealer, 2018
left: Minda Andrén, Zhangwei, 2018



The Chasm, 2019, installation view, Franz-Josefs-Kai 3/17, Vienna


Aline Bouvy, Kraft, Masse, Raum, Zeit, Geometrie (after AR Penck), 2018


Arik Brauer, Kein Viereckiger Heileigenschein, 1968


The Chasm, 2019, installation view, Franz-Josefs-Kai 3/17, Vienna


Stefan Fuchs, Der Junge muss an die frische Luft, 2019


Jannis Marwitz, untitled, 2018


Stefan Fuchs, untitled, 2019


Elisabeth von Samsonow, Transplant III, 2011


The Chasm, 2019, installation view, Franz-Josefs-Kai 3/17, Vienna


left: Jannis Marwitz, untitled, 2018
right: Jannis Marwitz, untitled, 2018


Aline Bouvy, untitled, 2018


The Chasm, 2019, installation view, Franz-Josefs-Kai 3/17, Vienna


The Chasm, 2019, installation view, Franz-Josefs-Kai 3/17, Vienna

From left to right: Viktor Timofeev 1. Crack 1 in the Porcelain, 2017 2. (∞A) / B, 2018 3. Sazarus I, 2016 4. Everything Dies But You, 2016 5. (10A+5)/B, 2018 6. Interdependence, 2016 7. New Clouds (PLAST1CITY), 2012


Yein Lee, being-lichens, 2019


Laurence Sturla, On Curlew Road, 2019


The Chasm, 2019, installation view, Franz-Josefs-Kai 3/17, Vienna


Ivan Pérard, Please Humans, 2019


left: Aniara Omann, Pollinator (Moon Face)
right: Aniara Omann, Pollinator (Snake)


Laurence Sturla, I saw but two stars I, 2019


The Chasm, 2019, installation view, Franz-Josefs-Kai 3/17, Vienna


Laurence Sturla, I saw but two stars II, 2019


Ivan Pérard, Open up Your Parts, 2019


Aniara Omann, Pollinator (Elven Ear)


The Chasm, 2019, installation view, Franz-Josefs-Kai 3/17, Vienna


Ivan Pérard, Dies on Your Tongue, 2019


Lu Yang, Uterus Man, 2013

photography: Courtesy the artists and Yves-Michele Saß



The Chasm takes imagination as a general context in which to examine artistic practices that are interested in pre-modern myths and/or futuristic utopia. Instead of focussing on their temporal difference the exhibition suggests them as two kinds of knowledge, unequal in their theoretical and practical results, but not in the kind of mental processes which are the precondition of both.

Therefore the works fantasize about humanity, bodies, mysticism, brutality, architecture, visuality, sexuality, aggression, myths, apocalypse and the post-human in the forms of drawings, sculpture, paintings, installation and video:

Silicone based creatures for a post-human earth crawling across the floors and our dreaming ancestor (Aniara Omann); a wooden idol with a thai chi gesture (Elisabeth von Samsonow); a hero in outer space shooting ovaries and menstrual blood (Lu Yang); a Penck painting re-imagined on a collection of breasts & walls morphed into flesh (Aline Bouvy); cybernetically enhanced crustacean snacks impaled on metal spears (Ivan Pérard); meditations on renaissance paintings turned into emerald and ruby dreams (Jannis Marwitz); transmuted earthly burial mounds of an ancestral future (Laurence Sturla); fierce warriors timetravelling through collaboration (Minda Andrén); a mysterious halo (Arik Brauer); an amourphous object hanging from the ceiling haunting the binary mind (Yein Lee); glimpes into an alternate universe oscillating between order and chaos (Viktor Timofeev) and an architectual model for a psychedelic german farm house (Stefan Fuchs).

The exhibition is organized by Yves-Michele Saß and made possible with the kind support of Franz Josefs Kai 3, Zeller van Almsick, KOENIG2, Lucas Hirsch and Segurio Insurance.