Supervised by:

Hans Kupelwieser,

Nicole Pruckermayr

Assisted by: Michael Tasch

The Artist in Residence Programme 2012 was realised by the art students at the Institute of contemporary Art (TU Graz). For the Austrian Sculpture Park, the centre of interest was how young artists handle the circumstances of this particular museum terrain while interacting with it temporarily.

In course of this scope, the students created an exhibition of temporary artworks under the title of “Auflösung inbegriffen” (dissolution included). Conducted by their professors Hans Kupelwieser, himself a renowned Austrian Artist, and Nicole Pruckermayr, 33 students developed 14 sculptural artworks that deal with the concept of evanescence in various forms. For their realisation, innovative materials, such as biologically degradable wood shavings, Himalaya salt blocks and bio bags, came to use. Additionally, the local conditions were integrated into the concepts of the pieces. Thus, sculptures out of flower seeds, grass and gravel were developed.

Main topic was a contemplative deceleration and the proposed continuous decay, evoking further questions to analyse, such as: What happens, if you don’t place the laborious work in an evaluative comparison to something that destroys itself, that degrades or dissolves itself?

Thereby, the self-degrading projects created a suspense-packed contrast to the permanent sculptures in the park. Shapes, surfaces and materials were subjects to a continuous transformation through outside influences like the weather, visitors and natural biological processes like growth or putrefaction.

At the end of the exhibition period, only a fraction of the former sculpture remained. Sometimes though, something new or very different was the result. Other sculptures weren’t existing anymore at all. The projects drew a line from random objects you hardly recognised due to their small size as miniature sculptures to precisely staged objects, whose process of decay lasted the whole summer.

The opening of the exhibition was celebrated on June 16, 2012 through a collective tour with short statements and descriptions by the students to their works. The subsequent buffet was developed as a Food-Design-Project in course of the lecture “Künstlerische Gestaltung I” (Artistic Design I) led by Daniela Brasil. The visitors were delighted by the imaginative idea of fishing their properly packed food out of the pond or picking it from trees.

In conclusion of the programme, the documentation of the projects was put together as a catalogue and was released during the Late Summer Celebration on September 9, 2012 at the Austrian Sculpture Park

Students of TU Graz (Technical University)/Institute for Contemporary Art:

Leszek Barszczewski, Brion Basha, Johanna Binder, Romana Brandstätter, Sonja Brandstetter, Clementine Dambricourt, Bettina Domenig, Daniela Ehrenleitner, Andreas Eibl, Philipp Grein, Wolfgang Gruber, Elise Guillemin, Peter Heinzl, Claudia Huber, Michaela Hubmann, Stefan Krische, Alicia Leopold, Christina Maierhofer, Peter Mayrhofer, Tina Moser, Jürgen Münzer, Markus Neumaier, Carina Pammer, Manuela Pammer, Claire Perus, Gernot Pichler, Melanie Pils, Peter Reichhalter, Christiane Riedler, Carina Stabel, Justin Tauscher, Nina Ulrich, Elisabeth Weiss