VIENNA.- Emerging artists provide an art fair with some of its most exciting booths. Since 2012, Frieze has showcased new talent through its Focus series, which puts a spotlight on galleries that have been in operation for 12 years or less.
Among the 34 galleries chosen for Focus at this year’s Frieze London (through Oct. 15) are a handful from Vienna, which is home to an increasingly dynamic and international contemporary arts scene.
Sophie Thun, 37, has photographically documented her latest solo show, “Leaking Times,” created for a converted sugar refinery in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The German Polish artist, who is represented by the gallery Sophie Tappeiner, revisits techniques in analog photography and photograms with at times life-size images exploring the interface of production, performance and exhibition.
Laurence Sturla, 31, will be exhibited in his native England for the first time and unveil his largest-scale work to date. Part of a series that has been seen at Vienna Contemporary, Liste Art Fair Basel and his Vienna gallery, Gianni Manhattan, his over-fired ceramic sculptures at once evoke decaying industrial parts, antique ceramics, organic growth and mechanical precision.
At their studios in Vienna, the artists spoke about their working processes.
The following conversations have been edited and condensed.
SOPHIE THUN
Q: How will you be developing your artistic practices further for Frieze?
A: The format of an exhibit as a genre interests me. It does not just involve hanging pictures on the wall, but rather is something that has a given length. It also includes who enters and how people interact. Exhibits always have a performative aspect.
I will be adapting the space in Ljubljana to a fair stand. So it is a rendering of the exhibit format within a booth — a kind of re-cropping or spatial investigation. One can find this in paintings of the past, for example on altars in churches. They were created for concrete dimensions.
I used to paint, and the first thing I would do is build the frame. In photography, it’s exactly the same. The first decision is the size. My work makes visible the darkroom and the space where the image is taken. I also leave in traces of the alignment process.
Q: Does your work challenge contemporary practices in photography?
A: With a smartphone, the device starts rendering the photo before you take a shot. An analog photograph is more like an etching or wood carving. It functions through contact like in graphic work. The most important work happens in the dark — not behind the camera but in the process of materialization.
I am also interested in the overlapping of different temporalities. In “Slaughterhouse-Five” by Kurt Vonnegut, there are extraterrestrials who don’t have linear time. Rather, everything happens simultaneously: dying, eating. In painting, there is also such a tradition. For example, in Genesis tableaus where the Earth is created, the animals and people are banished — all captured in one image.
Q: Has Vienna shaped you as an artist?
A: I originally studied painting here, with Daniel Richter. Then I discovered a darkroom one floor down at the Semperdepot (of the Academy of Art). It was always empty. Working with analog photography was totally out. In contrast with this class full of people — which was of course also very exciting — it was a room where you could close the door.
Some people prefer to work in isolation. Others have a team produce their work for them — which also has a long tradition, if you think of Rubens. I apparently like to work alone in darkrooms.
It is also just a great city to live in. I have a studio provided by the federal government. It is compact so that time is not as scarce as in a larger city. That is worth so much.
LAURENCE STURLA
Q: How will you be developing your artistic practices further for Frieze?
A: It was a question of how far I can push things. I used around 250 kilos (551 pounds) of clay for each sculpture. With each firing, I am keeping my fingers crossed that it all survives!
I like to think of them as like postmortems. There’s a piece that appears like a cutaway on a construction site, or an archaeological discovery, or something surgical.
The moment that it’s taken from the kiln, the clay is porous and absorbs everything from its surroundings. The parts are placed in slurry, which creates a kind of a coating of studio detritus.
They will then be placed in saltwater, which gives them a false weight — because by weighing them, drying them out again and then reweighing, you can determine how old a piece is, like with Roman pottery — so it’s like creating a fake history. There will be a salted tide line. It’s this constant lapping of time.
Q: How does the theme of industrialism come to the fore?
A: The book “Smallcreep’s Day” by Peter Currell Brown accompanied the work. It’s about a character who quits his job working in a factory and becomes a potter. He develops a romantic sort of lifestyle, but it’s also a strange horror story because of how grim and how visceral the descriptions are. He has worked in a factory all of his life making the same thing over and over again. He goes on a journey through the factory to find out what he’s making and never quite finds out.
The city where I’m from, Swindon, was the home of the railway. There were big factories making trains. And then the industry closed down. It’s now where banks have their call centers.
So my work takes into account this transition, what this means to the places and the people. There are also references to modes of work, their ritualistic aspects and why we maintain them — sort of looking at the ghosts of industrialization.
Q: Has Vienna shaped you as an artist?
A: Vienna has given me possibilities that I don’t think I would have anywhere else. I can afford to have a studio and somewhat of a life. I don’t think that exists in a lot of places — not England, certainly not Paris.
The city is small, but that means that it’s tight-knit and supportive. You get to know everyone. It’s also changing and growing all the time, which is quite exciting.
This article originally appeared in
The New York Times.
