A project
with the TransArts class, University of Applied Arts Vienna. Curated by Julia Harrauer.
A door represents a transition — a threshold. This project began with a simple yet unusual place
– a double door.
On the second floor of the University of Applied Arts Vienna, a set
of double doors once led to the studios of the TransArts class. Yet, when opened, they reveal a different reality — a solid
wall. The passage could have been entirely walled-up, the doors removed, and the wall seamlessly closed. Instead, it exists
in a state of paradox — a non-space, a reference to something that no longer exists. What remains is a relic of its former
function, a reminder of what once was. This passageway thus becomes a threshold that captures two points in time, bridging
past and present. Space is the medium through which these temporal shifts take form; without space, time becomes imperceptible.
A sealed-off door, stripped of its original function, transforms into something else — an architectural element of change,
oscillating between fiction and reality, past and future.
This threshold, simultaneously evoking
the past and creating an absence in the present, serves as the starting point for four artistic interventions by Jordi
Albers, Michael Robert Jiménez, Kimiya Rastgou Moghadam, and Elena Riener and Birgit Fellner. Over the course of
the year, the students of the TransArts class will reintegrate the site into the architectural and conceptual framework of
the university. The selected artworks engage with the tension between presence and absence, memory and transformation.
They treat space as an interface, challenging its physical and conceptual boundaries while making transformation an integral
part of the works themselves. Change is not only reflected in the site’s shifting context but actively materializes within
the pieces — through evolving materials, altered structures, and shifting meanings shaped by time and interaction.
–
Julia Harrauer
Dieses Alles ist Nichts (engl.: This Everything is Nothing) presents
new works by Birgit F. and Elena Riener. The basis of the works is Elfriede Jelinek’s text Mode (engl.:
Fashion), which also the exhibition title origins from.
A bark beetle, sequin dresses,
and never empty covers. It could also be a dressed up closet, and of course, the door can close, and then there is nothing
left. Yet the fact that none of us left the house naked today will also resonate in this place.
Messages
sent in the clothes-chat, texts read together, and hybrid exchanges of text lines describe what it might be about. But the
story itself unfolds in the space in between.
– Birgit F. & Elena Riener
