Styria Pavilion

As part of SHOWING STYRIA 2025 with the title Ambition & Illusion.

The pavilion provides a clear architectural guideline. An intermediate ceiling-like section divides the overall space diagonally, horizontally. In one part of the pavilion, a stylized mountain range symbolizes the topography of Styria – Hoch vom Dachstein an .... Herbert Brandl has enlivened this zone in the tradition of panorama painting. The monumental painting leads the public to the beauty of the Alpine landscape as well as reminding them of the storms of the country’s turbulent history. The pavilions also refer fundamentally to their locations. Mariazell as a prominent place of pilgrimage and Leoben with its long mining tradition are both located in extensive woodland with a strong forestry industry.

How does a country represent itself in a picture, how do its people represent themselves in the mirror of history? Where does tradition meet modernity and the present? These questions arise in view of the artistic contributions in this pavilion.

Constantin Luser’s acoustic tree, as well as his trumpet figures, open up a cultural space in which the regional context is reflected in multiple ways.

The duo Plateau Residue specifically addresses the use of resources using the example of forestry.

Karoline Rudolf and Antonia Jeitler take up the presentation form of the monument in their considerations. The plinth, which usually elevates and exposes the figure, becomes an unstable terrain in Rudolf’s work, on which the artist resists the turbulence of reality. Jeitler’s portraits of anonymous people who remain invisible in society testify to the fragility of the self-image and the possible exposure to the exposed place on the pedestal, which here is a dubious one. It is always the confrontation between tradition and modernity that is expressed in art – regional aspects against the backdrop of global reality.

This is also visible in Mito Gegič’s video work, where a gigantic wrecking ball swings from one monitor to the other between two young people in folkloristic clothing.

Herbert Brandl
Constantin Luser
Plateau Residue
Antonia Jeitler
Karoline Rudolf
Mito Gegič

Works of art

In Brandl’s paintings, concrete contents are rarely at the forefront. Although one can recognize the mountain, the cat, the hyena and other creatures and objects, it is rarely about them. It is the questions of painting and the possibilities of representation that occupy Brandl. How does the imagination ultimately become a concrete image? Basically, we already abstract in our perception of the visible world, we individualize what we see.

This process is taken further in the painting. Brandl usually starts from existing images. However, these are rarely recognizable in the finished picture, as he transforms them in the painting process. As a result, they lose or change their original reference to reality.

Brandl often equates phenomena in nature (climate, weather, precipitation, ...) with the processes of painting. Both are initial dynamics with high drama. Reality is created in nature as well as in painting. Thus, the mountains are often not mountains, but products of pictorial conventions that have shifted into the painting from various sources – Space Night, Google Earth, tourist advertisements, etc.

His painting always pushes out of the frame. It is capable of breaking out of the square and occupying the space as an installation. In the installation, the reality content increases. The audience is actually in the picture, is part of the picture. Brandl’s exhibitions are often territories that can be explored. Oversized formats and unconventionally positioned paintings are partly responsible for this perception. The installative as well as the sculptural is therefore a consequence that Herbert Brandl seems to draw from painting.

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Constantin Luser develops his three-dimensional installations from drawings. In elaborate, seemingly technoid concepts, ever denser scenarios emerged over the years, which increasingly developed into realistic spatial structures. His world of ideas, which he differentiated within the drawing, is based on all kinds of object inventions that create a kind of counter-world in the surreal cosmos.

In the process of actually conquering space, the artist explored various technical possibilities. Musical instruments – both visual and acoustic objects – have determined his work for years. The transformation of the drawing from paper into real space initially led to wire structures that can be read as three-dimensional drawings in space.

The movement of the wire rods hanging freely in space and their shadow images fundamentally expand the scope of reception. The result was functional music apparatuses. The tubular and funnel shapes are addressed both in their sculptural quality and in their functionality.

Participation is created through the use of these devices. The audience moves, as it were, in a three-dimensional drawing. Additional dimensions such as the performative and the acoustic now define the space in a completely new way. It is no longer the drawing that defines or constructs the space, but the acoustics and the movement in the space – both of the objects and of the audience.

In the pavilion, Luser shows a monumental tree, which – covered with guitar strings – represents a musical instrument. The somber soundscapes this instrument produces become the soundtrack to a dystopian reality

Works of art

The artist couple PLATEAU RESIDUE – an art historian and a geog rapher – work in broad-based project structures, which are mostly formulated in installations and moving images. Their thematic approach focuses on the fundamental relationship between humans and nature. This complex and multifaceted relationship is also part of their attention-grabbing project Sub Persona.

Using the example of the forest ecosystem, they attempt to draw conclusions about positive future prospects in terms of coexistence and economization. PLATEAU RESIDUE filmed in a Slovenian primeval forest area that is usually inaccessible to the public. Interviews with people involved in the care and management of forests formed the basis for an extensive research panorama.

As much as the activist-oriented pair rely on concrete scientific observation, they also create narrative structures that originate from areas far removed from science. Gloomy soundscapes underline the emotional aspect of their concerns and at the same time create a cinematic drama.

The necessity of dedicating ourselves more intensively or responsibly to certain ecosystems is the fundamental concern of this art. From this perspective, primeval forests are not an exclusively ideal state. It is much more important to direct the exploitation of forests and ecosystems in general, which has already begun, into controlled channels. The exploitation of nature is a global fact, the effects and perversions of which we are directly exposed to on a daily basis. We usually confront them with a focus on profit (forestry, tourism, etc.) – as is also the case in Waldland Steiermark, which traditionally relies on these sectors both economically and culturally.

With Sub Persona, PLATEAU RESIDUE has opened up an opportunity to mediate between a professional expert point of view and a personal, emotional perspective in the sense of a positive perspective.

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We live in a narcissistic society. The radical assertion of individual ideas and life models is a determining force and is currently threatening social unity. Ambitious and daring, often trapped in illusions, many people today move through life wanting to establish themselves on the side of the winners.

This has happened at different times and in different forms of society. In addition to the everyday staging of the individual through fashions and hypes, there is also the irrepressible urge to be in the picture. It is not only the dominance of an all-encompassing digital culture that is responsible for this need. The desire for representation goes back a long way. Monuments once tried to overcome the absence of the sitter and idealized them.

Antonia Jeitler puts antiheroes on a pedestal. The fact that those portrayed are not only anony - mous but also fictitious creates tension between them and the audience. They look at us almost accusingly and marked by indeterminate suffering. They are not godlike kings and queens, they seem to linger in introspection, resigned. The uncanny quality they emanate is due to the fact that they function more as our mirror than as our idol. These figures bear the traces of their creation. Reinforcements, holes and fractures emphasize the decrepit character of these seemingly sexless figures.

Jeitler’s busts are symbols of decay and remembrance. Their psychological dimension – one seems to gain an insight into the mental life of the sitter – is astonishingly reminiscent of the character heads of the baroque sculptor Franz Xaver Messerschmidt.

In her work, Jeitler mixes the subjective sensitivities and mental states of individuals with strict, historical forms of general representation.

Works of art

Karoline Rudolf’s art is diverse in nature. Performative approaches are often combined with those of photography. Sometimes it is used as a medium of documentation, but in independent formulations it is also used to create images.

Social dynamics, fears, insecurities, failure – all of this can be felt in this art. Rudolf calls her balancing act on a shaky white pedestal, which rests on the inflated tube of a car tire, flüchtig – fleeting. The pedestal as a classic site of the monument stands for security, stability and permanence. The materiality of stone, bronze etc. further enhances this claim to eternity. Rudolf’s arrangement, on the other hand, is highly fragile – a rubber tube and a polystyrene cube.

The white plinth, also an expression of the modernist form of presentation for sculptures and objects, begins to totter. The performer has taken the place of the monument on the pedestal and is trying to compensate for the fragile state in which she finds herself. The artist is in a state of extreme concentration and caution. A fall would be fatal.

Karoline Rudolf’s work is essentially an allegory to the traditional form of sculpture. However, it is also a symbol of effort, rebellion and potential failure. This work of art thus combines the historical dimension of turbulent times with the unsettling developments of the present. It is an illusion that threatens to burst. A lonely individual makes an ambitious effort to gain safe ground – failure included.

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For Mito Gegič, the alternation between tradition and modernity is the central starting point of his art. In the traditional context of hunting, which has influenced him through his family, the artist observes how static rituals and memory are changing in the digital age. The eminent painter has also repeatedly explored object inventions and performative structures.

Hunting as an ambivalent activity between post-feudal, touristic and economic dynamics was and still is a popular leisure activity in aristocratic and upper-class social circles. Their iconography has become an integral part of cultural history. Gegič makes use of these powerful images by repeatedly contrasting them with contemporary aesthetics. The abundant forests of Styria and the cultural formulations that accompany them make Mito Gegič’s art appear to be in the right place.

In the ball game that the artist presents in the video Wrecking Ball, he refers to a music video by US singer Miley Cyrus, in which she swings through space on a gigantic wrecking ball. In Mito Gegič’s video, the black ball swings back and forth between two young people dressed in folklore. Here and there, cultural aspects are at stake. The game clearly shows a clash between tradition and contemporary popular culture. In this way, the conflict between the two cultural levels – tradition and modernity – is made visible or questioned in an ironic way.