Alex Hanimann ̶ Same but Different
15. September 2019 ̶ 17. November 2019
Opening on Sunday, 15th of September 2019, 11 a.m., Villa Merkel
The exhibition Alex Hanimann – Same but Different by Alex Hanimann brings together a series of new and existing works that focus on the relationship between reality and its depiction. Using the media of photography, video, sculpture, and installations, in his presentation Hanimann examines how we perceive reality in the here and now, and how this perception relates to the subjective perception of time and history.
There are images that are familiar to us from our everyday experience, or images that have been imprinted in the collective memory through the historical and socio-cultural experiences of the late 1960s and 1970s. In terms of form and content, the exhibition can thus be read as an exploration of the question of the fictionalization of the historical or as an examination of the mediality of remembering and archiving.
Since February 2019
BELLE & APHRODITE
Augmented Reality
by Barbara Herold
In the app BELLE & APHRODITE for smartphone or tablet, it is possible to experience a walk-in audio-visual metamorphosis of virtual plants.
The 3D plant BELLE extends across the entire Merkelpark. As an interactive form-cloud, it leads visitors, on the basis of data regarding their location and movement, to a virtual rose at the centre of the park.
APHRODITE was designed for the skylit atrium. In recurrent audio-visual loops, the 3D installation develops into a Phalaenopsis, a familiar type of orchid. APHRODITE can be viewed from all perspectives and, in its overlapping of simulation space and actual space, plays with the experience of abstraction, proportional relationships, proximity and distance.
Barbara Herold (*1977) directs her attention to the shaping of reality through the media. She investigates structures and phenomena which have established themselves through the influence of media technology on society; she develops her own systems on the basis of prevalent design practices such as computation and algorithms. Her works arise in the dynamic field between analogue and digital technology.
Download App BELLE - APHRODITE
Since May 18th, 2014
Lois Weinberger – Mobiler Garten
The ‘Mobile Garden’ of the artist and Documenta participant Lois Weinberger, who lives in Vienna, was set up in front of the winter garden of the Villa Merkel, where it will remain for an extended time. In its wildness, it contrasts with the surrounding Merkelpark, whose well-kept greenery is reminiscent of English landscape gardens.
A field formed out of yellow plastic tubs filled with soil has been exposed to the free forces of nature. Over time, pioneer and ruderal plants have come to occupy the space in a spontaneous colonisation. Nature unfolds in accordance with the dynamism of its own laws in a veritably paradisal, because free manner. A Garden of Eden established itself.
Over the years, this natural process of colonisation began to change into a form of decaThe tubs gradually become bleached and decompose. The plastic particles blend with the soil and the plants; after decades, rainfall can be expected to have washed the underlying area clean again.
The garden is a fundamental form of our encounter with nature. We are familiar with gardens that aim at producing crops as well as those that are set up as beatific sites of contemplation. Affinities with paradise are possessed by the fruit and vegetable garden, the Baroque pleasure garden or, as an oasis amid the city, the public garden – in Esslingen, namely the Maille and the Merkelpark.