THE CASTLE: DAS SCHLOSS
The castle stands as a symbol of humankind’s longing for meaning and its fortification. It embodies the claim of dominating living space and the management of its surrounding life. They say that it banishes, represses and destroys all those who seek access to its inner contexts. And it seems as if Käthe Hager von Strobele and Ernst Koslitsch have cast all these warnings to the wind, to challenge the authority of this institution: The Castle.
Käthe Hager von Strobele scales the sober confines of a Styrian estate. Finding and evoking rifts within this surrounding, her installation works penetrate the constitution of this living space and isolate the relics of a totalitarian and likewise melancholy accusation against the disorder of the world. Based on this ensemble of images, interiors and textures, Hager von Strobele brings about new order, by combining photographs and textural structures in mimetic processes of approximation and juxtaposition in the exhibition space.
In his current work »How to transform your home into a castle«; Ernst Koslitsch assesses the perfect idyll of the home as a space of retreat and closure – a space which he himself would “never leave without a good reason.” Yet how can one shut themself off from the outside world? And what then if curiosity takes hold, allowing the public exposure all the more to triumph over the prison of your own living space/dream? In his „provisional installations“, Koslitsch seeks fragmented answers to these categorical questions.
What is life like, how does one really live within these castle walls, where will it eventually lead us? It is within the constraints of the gaze, that the exposed order of space comes to light.
Käthe Hager von Strobele Born 1981 in Bozen (Italy)
Käthe Hager von Strobele studied Art and Photography at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Philosphy at the University of Vienna, and completed a post-graduate program (Educating, Curating Managing) at the University of Applied Arts Vienna.
Her photographic work inquires into the analogies between photography, clothing and spatial textures, as well as their functions as media surfaces for individual identification. Her experiences in group and solo exhibitions include a strong interaction of artistic and curatorial practice. She is assistant at the University for Artistic and Industrial Design in the department Textile/Art & Design in Linz.
Ernst Koslitsch Born 1977 in Wagna (Austria)
Ernst Koslitsch studied Photography at the University of Applied Arts Vienna and Performative Art and Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Using the medium of photography, his models of housing document constructed realities that, in the form of images and spaces represented through media, determine our perception. The constructed models of housing are joined by the photographic image that is more than just the mere representation of the model producing its own reality of modelled and imagined spaces.
Koslitsch has been awarded the Emanuel und Sophie Fohn Stipendiums (2007/2008), an award from the Province of Styria, and the ECB Photo Award. He has been represented at several solo and group exhibitions since 2001.