Nine Buildings, Stripped.
A Lecture by Andreas Fogarasi
Wednesday 07.09.22, 7.30pm, Mattiellistraße 2-4, Karlsplatz, Vienna
In his sculptures, photographs, exhibitions, films and publications, Andreas Fogarasi explores the connections between visual culture and social reality. What do society, politics, or history “look like” and how are those images shaped, and re-invented over time.
“Nine Buildings, Stripped” is a long-term project that documents the changing architectural surfaces of the city by collecting actual fragments of buildings, both demolished and newly built. The results are “material packages”, wall-mounted sculptures composed of original parts of buildings that no longer exist and samples or parts of the structures that replaced them (facade elements, floorboards, tiles, glass panels, doors, bricks, color samples, etc.). They offer radically abstract portraits, reduced to materiality, colors, and tactile qualities, of specific urban situations across time. Between image and sculpture, surface and depth, document and construct, they embody example cases of how we build and rebuild at given moments: material freeze-frames that capture the complexity of the city’s genesis in vivid tableaus.
By exposing the changing materials of the city, and the various motivations behind this constant re-building of the urban environment, Fogarasi highlights the emergence and visible expression of political, economic, cultural, and sociological structures and the interconnectedness of seemingly diverse discourses: technology, culture, ecology, fashion, heritage conservation, or local lore.
Andreas Fogarasi (born 1977) is a visual artist based in Vienna. His work has been presented at numerous exhibitions internationally: Museo Tamayo, Mexico City; Ludwig Museum, Budapest; New Museum, New York; Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf; Muzej suvremene umjetnosti, Zagreb; CAC, Vilnius; Frankfurter Kunstverein; and Palais de Tokyo, Paris.
Solo exhibitions (selection): Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2020); Galerie Thomas Bernard, Paris (2018); Georg Kargl Fine Arts, Vienna (2022); Proyectos Monclova, Mexico City (2016); MAK Center, Los Angeles (with Oscar Tuazon); Galeria Vermelho, Sao Paulo; GfZK – Museum of Contemporary Art, Leipzig; Museum Haus Konstruktiv, Zürich (2014); Trafó Gallery, Budapest; Prefix, Toronto (2012); Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid (2011); Ludwig Forum, Aachen (2010); and at the Hungarian Pavilion at the 52. Biennale di Venezia (2007), where he was awarded the Golden Lion Prize for best national participation.
