EVELYN LOSCHY | ZERREISSPROBE

EVELYN LOSCHY | TENSION TEST

Opening: Thursday, 15th January 2015, 6 pm
Where: Galerie Michaela Stock, Schleifmühlgasse 18, 1040 Vienna

15.1.-17.1. & 3.2.-7.3.2015

In her first solo exhibition in Vienna young Evelyn Loschy presents an insight into her oeuvre so far. The focus lies on the human being and its existence, both torn between (social) standards and (physical-emotional) possibilities. This breaking test is playfully set in scene in Loschy's works, in some cases also to liberate itself from this tension, even at the price of destructive act, the victim of which becomes the piece of art itself.

Loschy works with a large variety of materials and methods, reaching from video, photography, land art and location-specific interventions to kinetic, (auto-)destructive sculptures which have become the focus of her work over the last years.

The kinetic sculpture IS IT ME, thus, represents a substantial part of the exhibition. It shows an iron rocking chair which, via a motor, is permanently set in motion. Two bellows placed at the back skids are consequently also activated and breathe air/life into a human figure sitting in the rocking chair. Oxygen is pumped into and aspirated from the blow-up doll through a valve in the heart and in the head – body and machine, heart and head form a perpetual motion machine.

ME AND MY SELVES is a found footage video based on the movie made from the Austrian novel "Geier-Wally" from 1921. Loschy only uses those scenes from the original movie in which the main character is depicted alone. With the help of different atmospheric settings, costumes and background props, several variations of her own Self evolve from the figure (the Brave, the Pessimistic, the Wise, etc.) ME AND MY SELVES lets these different facets communicate with each other and, thus, tells a story of resistance, inner conflicts and the struggle for power and subjection.

ENTKOPPELUNG (DECOUPLING), a stop-motion video, shows the artist in action with her grandmother's bras – a game as well as a fight, a process of decoupling from old thought patterns, which can be heard in an encoded way via the sound of a mechanic typewriter.

Evelyn Loschy, born in Graz in 1980, studied "Transmedia Art" with Brigitte Kowanz at the University of Applied Arts Vienna (graduation in 2013) as well as "Audio-visual Art" at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie Amsterdam. She studied "Constructive, Multimedia-based Sculpture" and "Media Art" at the University of Arts in Berlin. Loschy is co-founder of "Lafin C'estmerde" (society for interdisciplinary art production and reception) and drummer in the art rock band "Perlen für die Säue" ("Pearls for Swine").