Reverse Homesickness

Exhibition

10.05. - 08.07.2023
das weisse haus, Hegelgasse 14, 1010 Wien

with Kristaps Ancāns, Dunhill and O‘Brien
curated by Corina L. Apostol, with the curatorial assistance of Allison Harbin

Nearly untranslatable into English, Goethe and the German Romanticists used Fernweh to describe an acute aching or sickness, not out of homesickness (Heimweh), but rather for a different way of life entirely. Through the sculptural installations by the artists Kristaps Ancāns and the artist duo Dunhill and O’Brien, this exhibition invokes potentialities of both emotional longing and a physical movement beyond what is known, where the absurd takes on additional significance. Like the title of this exhibition, the artists’ works are also, in a sense, untranslatable. Although shapes seem familiar, the sculptures’ expected function is diverted and dismantled. Through this subversion of monumentality, we can instead focus on what exists around and in-between our bodily encounters with the kinetic realities embedded in the works. In exploring the tension between the known and unknowable, the viewers are confronted with their own impulse to push beyond the boundaries of their known world(s).