ECHOESECHOES

02.04.–10.05.2025

From 2nd April until 10th May 2025, Galerie Martin Janda is showing the group exhibition ECHOESECHOES with works by Erwin Bohatsch, Hugo Canoilas, Adriana Czernin, Raoul de Keyser, Svenja Deininger, Werner Feiersinger, Nilbar Güres, Jakob Kolding, Július Koller, Mladen Stilinović, Sven Stilinović and Sharon Ya'ari. As a sequal to ECHOES, the show has a focus on painting and works on paper.

ECHOESECHOES continues to explore zones of transition and permeability: between inside and outside, between language and images, between visions and promises. In these transitions, memory becomes an invisible but formative medium that permeates the spaces and continually leaves new traces. The result is not only the echoing of past moments, but also the space in which the boundaries between reality and imagination become blurred. The works in this exhibition capture the subtle transformation of memories that echo within us, that shape us and slip away at the same time. They are like afterimages that manifest themselves in physical spaces as well as in our thoughts and feelings.

In his most recent project Korzo, Werner Feiersinger is dealing with utopian industrial architectures and landscapes in Istria. The sculptor and photographer has been exploring specific buildings in modern architecture for a long time, especially Le Corbusier and Italy’s post-war modern architecture. While the focus here was on the architecture’s sculptural qualities, Feiersinger now aims to convey the moods of specific places. Untitled (Pula) (2022) shows the empty storefront of an abandoned shopping mall. The different materials and tonalities – of stone, glass, paint, a shiny golden curtain – evoke painterly qualities and a melancholic atmosphere.

In 1966, Július Koller initiated the Junk Culture series: In this series, he collected colour waste and other materials from painting and then attached them to a surface. Fascinated by the traces and imprints that remained after the upper layers were torn off, Koller created, minimal compositions based on a technique of decollage and dripping. He recognised a sensitivity for materials and artistic processes in the so-called ‘junk’. He collected objects that he integrated into his painting process and thus defined his own creative space by incorporating the marginal.

“What is the color of pain? – White is the color of silence, very intimate, and pain is an intimate thing.” (Stilinović) During the war in Croatia in the 1990s, Mladen Stilinović applied white paint to various objects, connecting different concepts in these White Works: that of silence, emptiness, absence, pain, poverty and the absurd. His early white works – paintings on paper and cardboard (1974–1976) – reflect the relationship between the space of a painting and a brushstroke, and the artist’s interest in the relationship between image (the color white) and word.

Erwin Bohatsch's works are characterised by a multi-layered, processual painting method in which layers of colour, reworking and reduction are condensed into a subtle balance. His paintings and works on paper seem to be traces of something once tangible that is slowly approaching dissolution. “In contrast to the oil paintings, the works on paper are more spontaneous and intimate. I do them sitting at a table, which is reminiscent of diary entries, they are unfiltered, so to speak.” (Erwin Bohatsch)

For his latest body of work, Sharon Ya'ari has been cataloguing all the plants that are growing in the yard of his house in Tel Aviv. He systematically photographs them and develops the analogue prints on old photographic paper from the 1970s in his dark room. Any retouching is deliberately done with black ink. The plants – including some that the artist is intentionally growing, like the corn in Zea Mays (2025) – appear as frozen contemporary witnesses and symbols of transience and development. The lighting and the exquisite textures are reminiscent of a baroque painting.

In his paper collages, Jakob Kolding combines a variety of influences and motifs: from literature and classical painting, surrealism, psychoanalysis and dream interpretation to architecture, modern theatre, dance, hip-hop, pop music and post-structuralist identity theory. A world of constantly shifting, changing and overlapping positions is constructed. In the exhibition, visitors also encounter life-size figures – silhouettes, frozen in performative poses. They invite the viewer to relate to them.

In her collages, Nilbar Güres combines techniques such as drawing, stitching, appliqué and painting in her own free form to create richly associative scenarios. For the artist, textiles are not only an inexhaustible source of inspiration, but also media that transcend time and space and can create connections to past times and cultures. In On My Way to My Identity (2016), the path to finding one's own identity is depicted like a bridge over which a headless figure balances. Güres thematises self-presentation in the digital age and the associated, exuberant importance of fashion, technical gadgets and beauty.

Svenja Deininger’s paintings are the result of a processual way of working: “These pictures are abstract but nevertheless filled with the figurative as a form of possibility. They store memories of something figurative, which are activated in the viewing process and overlaid by own memories. Surface, texture, colour and form fan out an open field of radically abstracted reality, which is articulated in different ways in the individual works.” (Vanessa Joan Müller)

Raoul de Keyser attempts to break the boundaries of painting, taking steps out of the endpoint-like situation of monochrome painting. His work is idiosyncratic and tactile, consistently process-orientated and without a recognisable plan. In his early work, he experimented with the basics of painting: colour, varnish and canvas. Later, his visual language became more fluid and new motifs emerged. The artist loved to explore the tension between reality and abstraction.

In the 1970s, Sven Stilinović sought a more conceptual approach to the medium of photography and opposed not only the conventions of photographic practice, but also all forms of ideology and state institutions. For Portrait (1974), he alienated the portrait of his school friend Marijan Pongrac through explicitly “improper” editing: by roughly cutting it up, duplicating it and retouching it. The result is strangely touching and uncanny at the same time.

The often fragmented forms in Adriana Czernin's newest works refer to an interplay between inside and outside, to the tension between strict geometry and organic movement. Spaces in between are understood as fields that determine each other and hold the structure together. The main object remains intangible. “Each space also has its own meaning, both as an independent structure and as a demarcation and definition of other spaces. In this way, dense matter is created, whether flowing or in geometric forms, whether as a thing or as an apparent background.” (Czernin)

In his most recent works, Hugo Canoilas creates diverse visions of uncertain futures. Dreams are not to be understood here as a mere escape from reality; rather, the aim is to bring the real out of its potentiality through the power of imagination. “I began drawing through my dream’s meaning, allowing my imagination guide me.” (Canoilas) Both through their size and their unspecific arrangement, the elements in The Whelk and the Dragon (2025) cause a distortion of our usual perception. What seems familiar to us takes a surreal turn.

Erwin Bohatsch, born 1951 in Mürzzuschlag (AT), lives and works in Vienna (AT) and Venice (IT).
Hugo Canoilas, born 1977 in Lisbon (PT), lives and works in Vienna (AT).
Adriana Czernin, born 1969 in Sofia (BG), lives and works in Vienna and Rettenegg (AT).
Raoul de Keyser, born 1930 in Deinze (BE), died 2012 in Deinze (BE).
Svenja Deininger, born 1974 in Vienna (AT), lives and works in Milan, Berlin and Vienna (AT)
Werner Feiersinger, born 1966 in Brixlegg (AT), lives and works in Vienna (AT).
Nilbar Güreş, born 1977 in Istanbul (TR), lives and works in Vienna (AT), Napels (IT) and Istanbul (TR).
Jakob Kolding, born 1971 in Albertslund (DK), lives and works in Berlin (DE) and Copenhagen (DK).
Július Koller, born 1939 in Piestany (SK), died 2007 in Bratislava (SK).
Mladen Stilinović, born 1947 in Belgrade (RS), died 2016 in Pula (HR).
Sven Stilinović, born 1956 in Zagreb (HR), lives and works in Zagreb (HR).
Sharon Ya’ari, born 1966 in Holon (IL), lives and works in Tel Aviv (IL).