Our longing to be able to fly finds an early expression in the myths of ancient Greece. The tragic story of Daedalus and Icarus tells of the desire to overcome gravity and transcend the limits of human nature. The dream of flight comes to an end when, in a moment of hubris, Icarus flies too close to the sun and plunges into the sea.
 

Inspired by Yves Klein’s famous photo Leap into the Void (1960), Eva Schlegel initially had a man wearing a tuxedo jump into a lake three times from a height of seven metres. Later, in Zurich, she worked with professional bodyflyers dressed in everyday street clothes. In free fall or floating, we encounter the illusion that perhaps comes closest to flying.

Human-sized glass panels lean against the walls like loose pages of a book – one that is, however, impossible to read. The silkscreen-printed texts, based on material drawn from Eva Schlegel’s library, have been photographed out of focus to the point of illegibility. Although we cannot make out individual words or decipher their meaning, we immediately identify them as texts. Perhaps we can even guess what kind of texts they are. 
 

Blur has been a recurring principle in Eva Schlegel’s work since the late 1980s. Her blurred texts examine the process of reading and the limits of our perception. What remains of a text when it no longer conveys information? Do we still see a text, or has it now become an image? Their illegibility at first frustrates us, and yet it also sharpens our attention. Instead of grasping the content, we begin to perceive writing in a different way: its structure, density and arrangement. It loses its fixed meaning and becomes the starting point for something new.  

In Schlegel’s lead works, we once more encounter the flying and falling figures. This time, their movement seems frozen, and yet it is still unclear whether the bodies are rising or descending. Schlegel translates the photos into silkscreen prints on lead.
 

As a material, lead embodies a number of contradictions: it is heavy, yet soft and malleable; it can protect us against radiation, but is itself toxic. Schlegel describes lead as a ‘melancholic material’. Its heaviness and durability stand in contrast to the lightness and movement of the bodies depicted.
 

Schlegel sets the lightness of flying against the heaviness of the material, and so visualises the ambiguity of falling. It can mean freedom and letting go, but also failure. ‘When I have an idea (…), I start flying in my mind,’ Schlegel says of the moment when you do not yet know ‘whether it will succeed, or whether you will crash’. Schlegel embraces failure as an integral part of her artistic process that can provide the impetus for something new.
    

In See the invisible, Eva Schlegel takes us on a journey through space, past the Milky Way, black holes and distant galaxies.  Lasting just under seven minutes, the film was developed in collaboration with space architect Barbara Imhof and computer specialist Damjan Minovski.
 

It is based on SpaceEngine, a computer simulation that combines known astronomical data with computer-generated views of the universe, offering us a glimpse of phenomena and dimensions that would otherwise be invisible to us.
 

At the Kunsthaus Graz, See the invisible is projected into the Schlossberg Nozzle and so integrated into the architecture of Space01. This opening usually looks out onto the clock tower from the ‘Friendly Alien’. The familiar landmark has been replaced by a view of outer space, and so also a view of the past, since the light is only now reaching us from distant celestial bodies that have long since ceased to exist.    

The points of light on the narrow LED strip, which follows the S-shaped curve of the room, constantly form new patterns. They are based on a mathematical model developed by the British mathematician Alan Turing. In 1952, Turing described how, through the interplay of reaction and diffusion, complex structures can emerge from what was initially an almost uniform state. Small random variations can be amplified during this process, influencing where individual shapes emerge. These ‘Turing patterns’ are used today to help explain the stripes and spots found in nature, such as those on the coats of giraffes and zebras.
 

Eva Schlegel translates this principle into a moving image. Dance of chance moves between regularity and unpredictability: small changes continually produce new patterns and forms. The work also creates a connection between the inside and outside space of the Kunsthaus. After dark, a modified version of the artwork appears on the BIX media facade, bringing the Dance of chance out into the city.

Up in the Needle, Eva Schlegel disrupts the anticipated view of the historic old town of Graz with a 40-metre-long curtain of steel balls. Depending on where you are standing, this can appear as a translucent veil or condense into an almost solid wall. Once again, the apparent certainty of the image we see is called into question. We are invited to walk through the curtain and experience the city gradually coming back into focus before our eyes. 

Eva Schlegel reminds us that perception is not a constant. What we see, and how we see it, changes with our position and movement in space. Sometimes, a simple shift in viewpoint can be enough to make a familiar image take on a new form. And so the exhibition does not conclude with one definitive view, but instead invites us to continually renew our own way of looking.