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21er Haus opens Gelatin: Hole

21er Haus opens Gelatin: Hole on view 10 June–29 September 2013.

Gelatin, Hole, 2013. Installation view, Gelatin  and friends at the 21er Haus, 2013. © eSeL.at.
Gelatin, Hole, 2013. Installation view, Gelatin
and friends at the 21er Haus, 2013. © eSeL.at.
Following the intervention by Marcus Geiger (2011) and the Hans Schabus solo exhibition (2012), this year the 21er Haus is once again the venue of a site-specific show, created on the spot and occupying the entire building. It began with a solid cube, reaching up to the museum atrium’s ceiling. It stood as a mass of material, a mine just waiting to be exploited. However, nothing but emptiness was extracted from it at first. The music began, and the four artists, together with a group of friends they had brought along from around the globe, started digging and quarrying, creating hollows. The holes were filled and their contents then distributed around the space in the form of sculptures.

Gelatin touched down at the 21er Haus in search of lost form, negative space, and the underside of the surface. This vast titan filled the space with its lightness. Its perfect form was ruined; like some carious tooth, it was bored into and sculpted to create everything else.

Imperceptibly soft, its role was to create the exhibition and it was eaten away in the process. Gelatin ripped pieces out of the giant, rather like the eagle gouging out Prometheus’ liver. Classic materials and research into simplicity resulted in sculptures and vice versa. And all this happened with the help of a confusing mass of skilled actors, many hands giving and taking.

In six days, from 5 to 9 June 2013, Gelatin and their friends created the exhibition on site and before their audience, with musical accompaniment and food and drinks provided. They used the hollows dug out of the vast block as molds for sculptures, which little by little then filled the room. This six-day performance transformed the museum into a cross between a venue, studio, stage, and exhibition space. The exhibition features the sculptures created on site and what remains of their production is on show at the 21er Haus until 29 September.

Gelatin
Wolfgang Gantner
Ali Janka
Florian Reither
Tobias Urban
www.gelitin.net

Collaborators
Honza Bohač (CZ), Günther Bernhart (IT), Guðbrandur Bragason (IS), Cäcilia Brown (AT), Tom Van Camp (BE), Günter Gerdes (DE), Christoph Harringer (AT), Edith Karlson (EE), Kris Lemsalu (EE), Christoph Meier (AT), Martina Nosková (CZ), Michèle Pagel (DE), Anne-Katrin Rossberg (DE), Salvatore Viviano (IT), Ben Washington (GB), Olga Wukounig (AT)

Curator
Agnes Husslein-Arco

21er Haus
Schweizergarten
Arsenalstraße 1
1030 Vienna, Austria
Hours: Wednesday 10am–9pm,
Thursday–Sunday and public
holidays 10am–6pm
www.21erhaus.at
www.gelitin.net