14. 07. – 15. 10. 2023
at Belvedere 21, Vienna

With works by: Brishty Khatun Alam, Diana Barbosa Gil, Sarah Bechter, Anna Bochkova, Daniel Ferstl, Sara Ghalandari, Sophie Gogl, Jojo Gronostay, Christina Gruber, Gašper Kunšič, Irina Lotarevich, Miriam Stoney, Chin Tsao, Nazım Ünal Yılmaz, Julija Zaharijević

curated by: Christiane Erharter, Andrea Kopranovic, Ana Petrović, Claudia Slanar, Luisa Ziaja

 

In Sarah Bechter’s large-format paintings, organic forms and mysteriously fluid creatures drift across the canvas. One of her characteristic subjects is hands with grotesquely elongated fingers that feel out the pictorial space, seemingly in search of its boundaries. They also give a sense of the process that created them – a painterly gesture that inscribes Bechter’s own role as an artist within the image. As if in a single fluid motion, the artist dissolves anthropomorphic features into lines, planes, or spatial elements, before allowing translucent figures to reemerge, who either demand space or get lost in their own currents. Bechter’s atmospheric works are build up with many glazes of oil paint, and they speak of discontent as well as a sense of confinement, but also of the possibilities for moving beyond them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photos© Johannes Stoll/ Belvedere Wien