Isabella Kohlhuber - NO NO NO (display)

Opening: Fri, Oct 07, 19:00
Venue: ARTISTIC BOKEH
Admission free

In Isabella Kohlhuber's installation at Artistic Bokeh, the black glass window becomes a changeable interface by applying interactive consumer-technology to detect the threshold of function and dysfunction in the languages of humans and machines.

The artist elects adhesive foil fixed from the inside of the window, displaying letter-forms as permanent disposable tools. Motion sensors  cause viewers involuntarily to  activate or deactivate its visibility. The message thereby occasionally withdraws from perceptibility.

Kohlhuber's interactive media installation opens a conceptual gap between the showroom's window and its minimal content, while gently swapping between elements of negation (“no”) and activation (“on”). Does the artist intend to play off todays terrifying necessity of an affirmative pleasing language against an inner silent resistance? And does repetition, as given in the title, make a gesture of refusal stronger or rather more helpless? Roughly, one would answer: “it depends on the context” (e.g. “no means no”, the feminist slogan against sexual violence, which points out  the difficulty in  understanding whether an expression is intended to mean “no”). Without any context given, do those two letters refer to anything at all? In everyday life we use them for simple denial, but also to show opposition, resistance or even to set a first action of self-protection. Is that really necessary? Presumably yes. But if so, is there a way to say “no”, within the context of contemporary art?

Isabella Kohlhuber, b. 1982 Bad Ischl, focuses on language in its various visible or audible occurrences. She holds a master degree in Transmedia Arts and teaches Typography and Media at the University of Applied Arts Vienna.

The exhibition is part of the program UNO, DOIS, DREI… AN EXHIBITION IN THREE INSTALLMENTS a Mz* Baltazar’s Lab curatorial project in collaboration with RIAT Research Institute for Arts & Technology at Artistic Bokeh in Q21. For this exhibition series Patricia J. Reis and Anna T. have invited artists focusing on language in a multitude of ways. Being based in a place that has been so divided in the context of immense sociopolitical changes, while becoming more multi-cultural, the curators wanted to look into language as a technology of communicating, connecting, and coming together. The exhibition series examines the visual language of colonialism (and who or what becomes illegal), the human and machine language and its threshold of function and dysfunction, and the embodied language of a queer migrant body that opens up and connects with other bodies and spirits alike. Mz* Baltazar’s Lab’s curatorial viewpoint brings together artists from different media and backgrounds that speak to the diversity of the creative hub that is Vienna. Mz* Baltazar’s Lab further aim at highlighting the lengthy process of artistic practice as research in the framework of social and political themes, such as migration, Eurocentrism, cyborgs, queerness, and the overarching theme of language. We are happy to present Mariel Rodríguez, Isabella Kohlhuber, and Pêdra Costa in a series of exhibitions running from August to December 2016 at the space of Artistic Bokeh in the MQ’s Electric Avenue.

Capture: NO NO NO (visual), 2016, digital collage (graphic, print, photograph, 3D-rendering) © Isabella Kohlhuber

<link http: www.isabella-kohlhuber.com>www.isabella-kohlhuber.com
<link http: www.riat.ac.at>www.riat.ac.at
<link http: www.artisticbokeh.com>www.artisticbokeh.com
<link http: www.mzbaltazarslaboratory.org>www.mzbaltazarslaboratory.org