The show brings together 100 unconventional works by 16 contributors from different backgrounds and disciplines. Among them are Lara Almarcegui (ES/NL), BERG Künstler*innengruppe (Clemens Bauder, Felix Ganzer, Ella Raidel) (AT), Jonas Burkhalter (US), Fernando Sánchez Castillo (ES), Thomas Feuerstein (AT), Siegfried A. Fruhauf (AT), Anita Gratzer (AT), Otto Hainzl (AT), Anna Katharina Laggner (AT), Walter Pilar (AT), Peter Putz (AT), Otto Saxinger (AT), Barbara Signer (CH), Monika Sobotik (AT), Andrea Sodomka (AT), Isa Stein (AT). The thematic group exhibition is curated by Paolo Bianchi and Martin Sturm, who were jointly responsible for Höhenrausch in Linz.
The VILLA KARBACH exhibition shows where the real and the bizarre meet, where bizarre realism enters the world. This neologism was coined by Ebensee writer Walter Pilar (1948-2018), the "instigator" of the art project.
A villa was built above Klosterplatz in Traunkirchen around 1850 for a Georgian-Russian princess's daughter - a meeting place for famous musicians and writers. Now works by contemporary artists can be seen there, such as the main work "Karbach-Hochalter" by Walter Pilar in the garden hall. In the Salon, Bedroom and Cabinet, guests can experience works that are fascinating and irritating, humorous and serious at the same time.
On display are heart performances, root worlds, sleeping sperm whales, bell caps and an endless necklace. From the terrace, the mountain world on the other side of Lake Traunsee looks like the background landscape in Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa". The crossing to the Karbach quarry is by boat. High-quality white limestone was quarried here from 1890 to 2016, "the mountain was transported across the lake" (according to Pilar) and processed into soda in Ebensee.
Guests encounter artistic interventions, such as an alchemical laboratory, a sound performance with singing stones ("Rolling Stones"), the alpenglow underground and the symbiosis of nature, art and industrial culture. It's romantic, wild and weird.
This project is part of the cultural programme of Bad Ischl Salzkammergut European Capital of Culture 2024.
The exhibition has the support of EuJapanFest.
Other info here.
