Private Mythologies

05 August 2023 - 27 September 2023

Info

Selected works

Artists

Representations of animals have always held a special place in secular iconography and its sacred counterpart, analogous to the cultural-historical relevance of the relationship between humans and animals; they have been charged with enormous, often ambivalent, symbolic meaning and, perhaps for this very reason, continue to mesmerise us today. Whether it be Pablo Picasso, Franz Marc or Max Ernst: they all succumbed to the strong artistic suggestive power of the animal motif – their oeuvre was lastingly influenced by it.

Opening on Saturday, 05.08.2023, the exhibition “Private Mythologies – Our fabulous Friends” at gallery twenty-six will showcase works by Alice Ella, Beáta Hechtová, Kryštof Strejc and Christian Bazant-Hegenmark, fathoming the encounter and relationship between animals and humans in the most diverse ways, exploring its dynamics and at times approaching art-historical lines of tradition in a thoroughly subversive manner.

“Private Mythologies – Our fabulous Friends” not only juxtaposes but confronts us human beings with the animal, which may offer the unique opportunity to reach a deeper level of understanding of the human condition, its implications, constraints and contradictions, depending on our willingness to engage with the other being, the foreign element becoming the clavis interpretandi.

These works captivate not only by the radical diversity of artistic approaches, the range there is – stylistically as well as in form and content – but above all by their directness, strong presence and vital freshness which in the synergy of these visual worlds entice exhibition visitors, creating a veritable suction effect that lures the beholders, almost magically attracts, even draws them in, directly into the private mythologies of the four artist personalities:

Beáta Hechtová, who was born in Prague in 1991 and whose work has already been shown in numerous exhibitions, studied graphics and printmaking at the University of Applied Arts Vienna and graduated in 2020, enjoys exploring various options and modelling different scenarios of a vague, indeterminate future somewhere between utopia and dystopia in her work, whereby the world of images created by the artist strongly suggests that those two non-places are not to be seen as a cuntinuum with extremes, but instead conceivable as states existing in parallel, fraught with tension, full of capacity for provocation and energy, astonishingly deep and rich in structure. shaped by perpetual oscillation between countless points of reference in terms of visual codes, heuristics and fields of association, while stylistically alluding to pop art, the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism, Magical Realism, or even Metaphysical Realism. It is to be noted and worth stressing that the visual strategies of pop (art and culture) are of central importance to Hechtová‘s entire body of work – from brash colors through to the fact that her pictures are even subliminally reminiscent of aesthetics which are undeniably part of he realms of the fantasy-/ fiction- seinen, this being all the more so, although or maybe because, the underlying sentiment, the prevailing mood, leans more towards the subgenre of gekiga. Resulting therefrom, prima facie, these works of art may appear to be some type of utterly idiosyncratic, bright, brash, amalgamation of aesthetic fragments, seemingly released from any concepts of time, exerting a significant, all but shocking visual impact.

Born in 1994 and having graduated from the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague in 2019, Czech artist Kryštof Strejc focusses on painting, installation art and film making.

Having begun to paint animals during his studies in the studio headed by Jiři černický, Marek Meduna und Michal Novotný (but still favouring more dominant animals, such as beasts of prey, then), fish and dogs have gradually conquered the pictorial space, have become his main subjects.

Strejc creates a truly astonishing visual idiom: audacious pieces of art, radiating a distinct resolute energy and vivacity – witty and somehow outrageous, a bit predatory looking even, in strong, even brash, colors, that go their own surprising ways, making for a new kind of visual energy with an allegorical flavour. The beholders might feel convinced that there is an obvious allusion to something, perhaps a comment on something hidden in there at times, but it remains unclear, for all of these paintings seem to be drawn from the artist‘s private mythologies.

The artist himself states that his work is autobiographical, at least to the extend that he imagines himself in most of the characters, for the sake of authenticity.

Strejc‘s complex chimeras celebrate the connection between human and animal, whereby mutuality is apparent at all levels: blending dog and fish imagery with human traits and characteristics, so that fish have human lips, while dogs are dressed and wear shoes (which does not differ much from everyday life, which is why there is absolutely no need to invent anything, according to Kryštof Strejc. Despite the absence of bleak tones, Strejc‘s works do have a certain dark quality, which is revealed paradoxically by the way the bright shades, cleat colors and pop culture references in theses large format paintings manage to convey subliminal smidgens of apocalyptic narratives, nestled in the timelessness of reality, of the here and now, undermining the fact, that the present we live in is not too distant from the narrative in question …

Blending traditional painting and drawing practices with multi-layered digital processes, Christian Bazant-Hegemark‘s final works often don’t show their underlying digital roots, which include randomized generative algorithms, a robotic drawing device and the development of a custom image abstraction software. This lets the works feature a mode of figuration that’s natively based in geometric abstraction – while keeping an analog exterior. Undeniably trauma, its utterly specific conditions and implications, is his current topical focus. After having graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in 2011, where he had attended three classes: graphics and printmaking (Gunter Damisch), expanded pictorial space (Daniel Richter) and film (Harun Farocki), he received a government grant to research his PhD thesis. Bazant-Hegemark whose work has already been shown internationally, receiving critical acclaim, has been teaching the life drawing and art history class at Art School Vienna (“Wiener Kunstschule”) since 2019 as well as its contemporary art class since 2020, has been invited to hold an impressive number of lectures and workshops workshops and take part in expert discussions at various institutions, including the University of Applied Arts Vienna, since 2014.

Alice Ella‘s works of art captivate due to and excel through their motivic immediacy, with a considerable amount of their appeal lying in their typical aesthetics, the Alice-Ella- signature style:vigorous coloring, rich in contrast, highly stylized silhouettes, effusive postures, iconic attributes, the memorable stylistic idiom somewhere between art deco, pop art and instagram-aesthetics, the recurring two central motifs hat and mouth; By dint of their interplay and synergy the depicted faces are turned into ciphers – enigmatic, utterly complex, highly charged symbols. Arising from the immediacy, the directness of the meeting between the depicted subjects and the beholders, kairos the magic of a proper or opportune time for action makes itself noticeably felt – that unique moment, that has the potential to turn hues into cues.

Immerse yourself in the private mythologies and experience and enjoy with us the uniqueness of the encounter between human being and animal in all its power, all its magic.