THERE’S A CALL
Rade PETRASEVIC | Michèle PAGEL
Extension Artists for Artists Friend
Ann MULLER | Nino STELZL | Johann NEUMEISTER | Mari STARK | Heti PRAK | Julia HALLER
curated by WIENER ART FOUNDATION
04. 10 - 21. 11. 2024
MLZ & WAF are pleased to present There's a call, a group exhibition by international artists devoted to different artistic practices but united at the same time by a deep-rooted critical use of visual tools.
“There’s a call for a new critical vocabulary that reflects these new creative practices…”
Rade Petrašević (b. 1982 in Vienna): Combines classical painting with a provocative, expressive gesture and an ironic pictorial language. His oil painting meets an impulsive "marker pen aesthetic." He subversively plays with art history by treating traditional subjects with a loose, often grotesque lightness and popular symbols, as well as everyday materials like plastic shower curtains, to blur the line between high culture and everyday aesthetics.
Michèle Pagel (b. 1985 in Werdau, lives in Vienna): Creates conceptual sculptures and installations from everyday materials and objects. Her formal language is both factual and poetic; she recreates familiar structures of the everyday world that reveal breaks and tensions in the familiar. Her works question social and cultural living environments and the fragility of norms and routines.
Ann Muller (b. in Luxembourg, lives in Vienna): Works at the intersection of painting, object, and space. In her installations, she combines painted surfaces, textile elements, and object-like pieces that place everyday materials in new contexts and explore their narrative possibilities. Her works question how we attribute meaning and stories to things.
Nino Stelzl (b. 1980 in Vienna): Works at the intersection of visual art and performance. His works combine close observation with a joy for experimentation and humor, often with pop culture references, exaggerated forms, and diverse materials. He questions familiar pictorial and semantic spaces and opens them up for unexpected combinations
Johann Neumeister (b. 1976 in Graz): His interdisciplinary practice moves between sculpture, installation, media, and conceptual art. Characteristic is the reduced use of materials, in which he transforms everyday objects into ironically fractured contexts. His themes are value and meaning, physicality and its virtualization, and the transitions between reality and fiction.
Mari Stark (b. 1986 in Vienna): Her artistic practice combines painting, installation, and performative elements with influences from fashion, pop, and youth culture. She experimentally uses textiles, dyed fabrics, and everyday objects in expansive arrangements that create scenarios between sculpture and image and address themes like body, community, and spirituality.
Heti Prack (b. 1980 in Wiener Neustadt, lives in Vienna): Her works combine ornament, pattern, and material experiments into complex pieces. She uses plaster, pigments, and bone glue to create surfaces that oscillate between naturalness and artificiality. Thematically, she explores the tension between past, present, and queerness.
Julia Haller (b. 1978 in Frankfurt a. M., lives in Vienna): Her work moves between painting, drawing, and object, questioning classical genre boundaries. Characteristic is the use of different materials and a fine attention to surface, light, and in-between spaces. She creates fragile fragments and suspended states that disrupt viewing habits and direct the gaze toward the invisible.
