By Peter Kogler

Manuel Gorkiewicz

Manuel Gorkiewicz’ works – which are often a crossover between videos and computer animation – are like a tightrope walk. Their starting point is the slick, winsome pictorial language of advertisements, the surfaces of which Gorkiewicz subtly reformulates and reinterprets. Familiar and everyday subjects are assigned new support, sometimes even new forms. Deceptively easy to grasp, they provoke one to ask: at which points is there a shift in the picture? Where does it change from one thing into another? *1976 in Graz, lives in Vienna and Berlin
 

Philipp Leissing

In his video works, Philipp Leissing uses found footage, for example that familiar sequence from Brian de Palma’s film Dressed to Kill where the camera travels through the exhibition spaces of the Metropolitan Museum. In de Palma’s film the presumed culprit is following his victim and the paintings in the background are simply stage props. Yet Leissing »masks« the protagonists (and in general everything that is not art), by retouching it in black. In this way, the architecture and people etc. are cut out, while the soundtrack is retained. The relationship between »essential« and the »unessential« information is reversed, the focus is on the information that remains. Leissing’s methods go back to those of conceptualism: the significance of information is relative. *1983 in Bregenz, lives in Vienna
 

Lisa Pock

Lisa Pock is a video artist who works with non-specifiable temporality. She is interested in the transition from still life to stills and the moving image. In Still Life she films the barely visible vibrations that appear on a house plant that are caused by the outer world. Like the vibrations on the covering of a loudspeaker box, which derive from the vibrations of the bass. Only what is most essential can be seen: the fabric, which becomes slightly fuzzy because of the vibration. *1976 in Graz, lives in Vienna
 

Marlene Haring

Marlene Haring’s works usually comprise installations with performative elements. In Heute bleibt die Küche kalt, wir gehen in den Wienerwald she makes an ironical reference – and not only in the title – to Martin Kippenberger’s Jetzt geh ich in den Birkenwald, denn meine Pillen wirken bald almost as if it were a feminist answer to the everyday phrases, very humorous and not without anarchistic components. The installation consists of a very ordinary, abandoned built-in kitchen, covered over and over again with spaghetti. Committed art, presented in a very energetic way. *1978 in Vienna, lives in Vienna
 

Kim Schoenstadt

Kim Schoenstadt is a young artist from L. A. who is associated with conceptualist circles, but also integrates participative elements in her work. In her project Can Control, the result of which was to be a large-scale wall installation, she invited fellow artists and curators to send her instructions concerning its form, colour etc by e-mail. Together with graffiti artists on site she then implemented them in the space of a gallery: the walls are first of all lined with canvas, then drawings by the artist are attached to it using sticky tape, before being sprayed with graffiti according to the instructions. In a final step, the sticky tape is removed and the structure of the »drawing« emerges. Here it is a matter on the one hand of pictorial signs, on the other it is of course a question of authorship, too. The project can also be found on the web: www.flickr.com/photos/ksprojects *1973 in Chicago (Illinois), lives in Los Angeles


PETER KOGLER was born in 1959 in Innsbruck. The work of the media artist has been exhibited in many venues, including the 46th Biennial of Venice (1995), documenta X (1997), EXPO Hannover (2000), Nice’s Villa Arson, Kunstverein Hannover (2004), and Galerie im Taxispalais (2004), and is currently being shown at New York’s MOMA (beginning October 2006). He lives in Vienna.