xposit / two thirteen. The Alumni Exhibition Series at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna

Each semester, works by three alumni recommended by professors at the Academy are exhibited in the offices of the Rectorate. This semester, works by the artists Lukas Heistinger (Art and Digital Media), Myriam Khouri (Figurative Painting) and Alexander Ruthner (Expanded Pictorial Space) are on display.

Opening hours:
Fri., 18 October 2013, 1.00 p.m. - 3.00 p.m. (opening)
Fri., 24 January 2014, 1.00 p.m. – 3.00 p.m.
and by appointment. For visits outside of opening hours, please contact ma.krenn@akbild.ac.at .

Opening
Location: Office of the Rector, room M 5
Words of welcome: Eva Blimlinger
Introduction to the work of Alexander Ruthner: Martin Guttmann (Art and Photography)

Office of the Vice-Rector for Teaching | Promotion of Early Stage Artists / Researchers, room M 5
Words of welcome: Karin Riegler
Introduction to the work of Myriam Khouri: Silke Otto-Knapp
Performance by Myriam Khouri

Office of the Vice-Rector for Art | Research, room M21
Words of welcome: Andrea B. Braidt
Introduction to the work of Lukas Heistinger: Constanze Ruhm

Lukas Heistinger

Lukas Heistinger was born in Vienna in 1987. He studied fine arts at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna with Constanze Ruhm and received his diploma in 2013.

For his contribution to the exhibition "Keeping Company (A to Z): …", Lukas Heistinger continually invites other artists of his acquaintance to produce works for the digital 3D environment of Google Earth. The tracking shots and views incessantly generated at the moment of viewing and shown on a monitor in the exhibition place the model, with its descriptive and imaging characteristics, in context. An interplay of participative cyberculture and collaborative work produces a visual landscape in the form of a media hybrid whose images and objects address the temporal structure that shapes them.

www.lukasheistinger.com

Myriam Khouri

Myriam Khouri was born in 1986 in Heidelberg, Germany. She studied fine arts in Karlsruhe and at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna with Silke Otto-Knapp, receiving her diploma in 2013.

In the exhibition, she presents an installation made of cloth objects and drawings, which is activated by a performance. Myriam Khouri relates to the cloth objects as a performer. She presents a monologue with intermittent ritualised actions. The cloth objects, in the form of tapestries, banners and relics, embellish the office space and underline the narrative structure already inscribed upon it. Watercolours of vases and baroque laces expand the installation. Her style of representation evinces an obsessively exaggerated view of things. After the performance, the office remains a stage, on which the costumes, banners and images lie ready for everyday stagings.

Alexander Ruthner

Alexander Ruthner was born in 1982 in Vienna; he lives and works in Vienna and Berlin. He studied fine arts at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna with Peter Kogler and Daniel Richter and received his diploma in 2011.

"There they lie! Dead? No, no, they’re only asleep! Truly? Yes, my child!"

Aspects of superficiality are determining aspects of Alexander Ruthner’s themes; trivial gestures seem to be scattered arbitrarily across his paintings. The decorativeness of the images is broken by vestiges of contemporary cultures.
The paintings being presented by Alexander Ruthner, some of which are new, show a merging of genre and style, representation and abstraction; image, texture and pattern assume equal importance.

www.eine.at