VIENNA.- Kunsthalle Wien presents the first solo exhibition in Austria by Diego Marcon (b. 1985, Busto Arsizio). The exhibition sees the Kunsthalle’s ground floor space in the MuseumsQuartier transformed into a bespoke theatre to present his new film La Gola (2024). Marcon’s work draws upon different cinematic vocabularies from diverse genres including musicals, melodrama, horror and slapstick comedy. His uncanny, singular imagery employs various technical devices such as robotics, prosthetics and CGI. This is supported by musical scores or scripts that deploy spoken language and sound.

La Gola (2024) is structured by a series of letters between two correspondents, Gianni and Rossana. Over the course of eight letters, Gianni describes the successive courses of an exquisite banquet, while Rossana gives an account of the progressive decline of her mother’s health. The two characters are played by hyperrealistic mannequins, that appear motionless with their eyes modelled and animated in CGI. Their voices are accompanied by an original score composed by Federico Chiari. The music was performed on a Pietro Corna organ and recorded in the Cattedrale di Sant’Alessandro Martire in Bergamo. Drawing upon themes familiar from art history, Marcon playfully combines graphic accounts of cuisine and disease against an elaborate and energetic score, using language, voices and music to create dramatic tension.

The film follows a series of recent works that explore what the artist describes as ‘ambiguity as a political weapon of defiance.’ In La Gola the characters are so absorbed in their own drama that they fail to listen to one another, appearing devoid of empathy. The two narratives run in parallel alternating between moments of poetry, seduction, sadness and abjection. Intentional, or ‘deliberate’ ambiguity (as it is referred to in global politics) here becomes a narrative device and an instrument of critique, producing a situation that is strongly resonant of our time.

Diego Marcon (b. 1985, Busto Arsizio, Italy) has held solo exhibitions at Kunstverein in Hamburg (2024); Kunsthalle Basel; Centro Pecci, Prato; Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Milan (all 2023); Museo Madre, Naples (2021); Institute of Contemporary Art Singapore/LASALLE, Singapore (2019); and Triennale Milano, Milan (2018). His work has been presented within numerous group surveys including Nebula, organised by Fondazione In Between Art Film for the 60th Venice Biennale; the Biennale de l’Image en Mouvement 2024, Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève (both 2024); and the 59th Venice Biennale (2022). Marcon’s films have also been screened at Tate Modern, London (2024); Cannes Film Festival; the Viennale, Vienna (both 2021); and the International Film Festival Rotterdam (2018). He lives and works in Milan.

The exhibition is accompanied by a new book, published by Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, Kunsthalle Wien and Kunstverein in Hamburg. Designed by Julie Peeters it is richly illustrated with production images and includes Marcon’s script for the film in addition to excerpts of the musical score and specially-commissioned texts by Charlie Fox, Gianni Revello and Sofia Silva.

Limited Edition

A limited edition by Diego Marcon is available from Kunsthalle Wien’s shop. This artist edition is a record of the newly commissioned film score of Diego Marcon’s film La Gola (2024). Composed by Federico Chiari, it was recorded on an organ in the seventeenth- century Cattedrale di Sant’Alessandro Martire in Bergamo. The record sleeve shows renderings of the two film protagonists – hyper-realistic mannequins animated with CGI technology. All proceeds support Kunsthalle Wien’s programme. Available in the shop at Kunsthalle Wien Museumsquartier.