Christian Egger. Things (Bleib Alien!), Spheres (Bleib Alien!), Undertones (Bleib Alien!)

15.02.2024 - 05.04.2024

The Horse, Dublin / Republic of Ireland

The Horse is very happy to present this exhibition by Vienna-based artist and author Christian Egger: Things (Bleib Alien!), Spheres (Bleib Alien!), Undertones (Bleib Alien!). On the opening night Egger’s presentation will be introduced by Kate Strain; the Founding director of Kunstverein Aughrim.


The show consists of a new series of text works that reflect different search movements and research presented in small, framed formats. The inscriptions and markings are placed on the back of mirrors and measure a wide field of knowledge with information from literature, astrology, geography, materials and colours.... This results in random chains of apparent connection and levels of notation that shape algorithms today and widen and open up common Internet queries. In addition other allegorical processes and ways of thinking determine Things (Bleib Alien!), Spheres (Bleib Alien!), Undertones (Bleib Alien!). An audio track of a voice played at The Horse describes references and hints to the works appearing in the exhibition, including the acoustic voice work itself. As much as these descriptions claim a neutral status, in which every argument seems unnecessary and already settled, the text outlines also the linguistic limits of describing what is immediately visible. Description, evaluation and interpretation in the text should neither collapse into one another, nor should this work of art consisting of words and sentences be absorbed solely in the linguistic content. This thought is also supported by a stack of visible, but not readable, exhibition booklets with an imagined discussion between a drug dealer, a life coach, a public relation manager and the artist himself. Further there is a textile sculpture with the call to Bleib Alien, as hommage to the 1974 founded band of the same name by the American musician Roky Erikson (1947 – 2019). The background for these different search movements and spatial approaches is provided by a series of sketches of a naive vocabulary of lines and surfaces, developed from intensive engagement of the artist with the formal language of the abstract avant-garde, which is installed in corresponding coordination with the sprayed walls. Titles are important and despite this exhibition being neither called Echoes (Bleib Alien!), Spaces (Bleib Alien!), Lines (Bleib Alien!) nor Shows (Bleib Alien!), Signals (Bleib Alien!), Unvernehmen (Bleib Alien!), these were equal candidates for the title in advance of the preparations too.


[Quelle: Einladung, Email]