LOGF
Veronika Dirnhofer | Julia Haugeneder | Michael Kienzer | Pavlo Makov | Mariella Lehner | Christian Schwarzwald

LOGF

On a supposedly old photo, one reads the letter combination LOGF on a building that could be both an observation tower and the tower of a small airport. The latter assumption is strengthened by the glider standing in front of it in the green. The captured moment has something of the unexcitedness of a rural open-air swimming pool shortly before closing time. The combination of letters on the building in the rural nowhere, however, represents the ICAO code, the code assigned by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) for the unique identification of airports. Each ICAO code consists of four Latin letters that define the exact location of an airport. The first letter indicates the continent or region: L stands for Southern Europe. The second letter represents the respective country: O for Austria. The third letter indicates the type of airport in Austria, international (W), military (X) or auxiliar. In this case, the letter stands for the airport responsible for search and rescue services, which would be Graz as the nearest, i.e. G. The fourth letter is identical with the first letter of the respective town, i.e. F for Fürstenfeld. The letter combination LOGF is therefore not a logarithm to any base F or a request to register in an obscure system F, but the international designation for Fürstenfeld Airport. Now probably only a manageable number of people who do not live in the district of Hartberg-Fürstenfeld will have known that the southeastern Styrian town has its own airport. The artists Veronika Dirnhofer, Julia Haugeneder, Michael Kienzer, Mariella Lehner, Pavlo Makov and Christian Schwarzwald have taken this extraordinary option of being able to land in the provincial metropolis of Fürstenfeld as an opportunity to give their self-organized exhibition at Galerie Gölles the title LOGF, which is as enigmatic as it is cosmopolitan. 60 years after the first hangar was built in Fürstenfeld (the asphalted runway followed only nine years later, in 1972), the airfield makes it to the title-giving subject of a contemporary art exhibition.

The combination of letters LOGF is not only chosen humorously, but is also part of the program, as it follows the intention of the artists to move from the large to the small, to think globally and act regionally, to think about the macrocosm in the microcosm, not to ignore the local problems with an open mind, to provide the international discourse with local roots, to exhibit locally with a universal claim, not to overlook the detail in the big picture and, as politically thinking people, to always have the neighbor in mind. Just as the French sociologist and philosopher Bruno Latour, who died at the end of last year, suggested mapping the earth as a network of critical zones, the exhibition at Galerie Gölles will also reveal a multi-layered, sometimes fragile interweaving of highly diverse forms of artistic expression and individuals. Prints are made, earth is baked, motifs are overprinted, marks are scratched out, experiences are layered, traces are drawn, thought processes are mapped, surfaces are bent, skins are stretched, pictures are stuffed, and always the potentiality of art, as a means and medium to make a statement about man and society, is questioned. Boarding completed. Ready for takeoff!

Roman Grabner, 2023

VERONIKA DIRNHOFER

1967 * in Horn (Lower Austria), grew up in Vorarlberg
1987 Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna – Prachensky Master School
1991 Study visit to New York
working scholarship of the Federal Ministry of Science and Research
1992 Diploma with distinction
Appreciation award of the Federal Ministry of Science and Research
Since 1993 university assistant at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna
1996 Study visit school of visual arts, New York
2002 Visiting professor at the University of Art, Linz
Cultural Promotion Prize of the Province of Vorarlberg
2004 Recognition Award of the Province of Lower Austria
Since 2006 Professor at the Institute for Visual Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna

Veronika Dirnhofer works with painting, drawing and ceramics. She is interested in political and social conditions. The connection between social action and artistic activity are central to her work.

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JULIA HAUGENEDER

1987 * in Vienna, 2011-2019 Academy of Fine Arts Vienna AT, studied graphic and printmaking (Christian Schwarzwald, Gunter Damisch, Veronika Dirnhofer) and art and digital media / as well as art and digital media (Constanze Ruhm), diploma with distinction.
2009-2014 studies of theater, film and media science, University of Vienna,
2009-2011 fotok, school for artistic photography, Vienna
2005-2010 University of Vienna, studies of art history and philosophy, diploma 2011
since 2008 founding member of BILDETAGE – artist run space, 1030, Vienna
since 2017 member of Kunstverein Baden A

Every material is associated with a set of cultural memories and events – these peculiarities are the starting point for Julia Haugeneder’s sculptures and installations, with which she explores what we call “object” and what relationships can be formed with it.

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MICHAEL KIENZER

1962 * in Steyr, Austria, lives and works in Vienna
End of the 1970s art school in Graz. End of the 1980s stage design at the Westfälisches Landestheater Castrop, Germany
2004-06 Professorship at the University of Applied Arts Vienna.
2007-2017 Curator of the Kunstverein Weikendorf, Austria
2011 ISCP New York
2001 Otto Mauer Prize Vienna
2008 Viktor Fogarassy Prize
2012 Austrian State Prize for Applied Arts

Michael Kienzer’s sculptural works and site-specific installations are characterized by opposites such as ‘attraction and distance’ and provoke, through purposefully placed material connections and formal irritations, questions about a rearrangement of circumstances.

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MARIELLA LEHNER

Mariella Lehner 1992 * is a visual artist whose practice encompasses drawing, painting, printmaking and sculpture. The underlying theme of her work revolves around the relationship between man and his environment, manifested in commentaries on issues such as feminism, environmentalism, and international conflict/solidarity.
Through an uncanny yet dreamy imagery and titles that allude to the often political origins of the works, the viewer is invited to explore and question the complexity of today’s social climate and the contradictions in their own attitudes towards the issues depicted.
In addition to participating in various national and international group exhibitions, her works have been exhibited in Austrian institutions such as the Künstlerhaus Bregenz, the Volkskundemuseum Wien, the Wien Museum, the Stadtmuseum St. Pölten and the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.

Mariella Lehner mostly deals with socio-political themes in her drawings and paintings. She uses various techniques and materials such as etching, monotype, airbrush or mural painting. Plaster image carriers often lend the works an object-like character.

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PAVLO MAKOV

1958 * in St. Petersburg. Lives and works in Kharkiv, Ukraine.
1974-79 Crimean Academy of Fine Arts (Simferopol, Ukraine)
1977-78 Academy of Fine Arts (St. Petersburg, Russia)
1979-84 Kharkiv Art and Industrial Institute, Graphic Arts Department (Ukraine)

1988 Artists’ Union of Ukraine
1990 Funen Graphic Workshop (Odense, Denmark)
1994 Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers (London)
2007 Corresponding Member, National Academy of Arts of Ukraine
2018 Winner of the Ukrainian National Prize Taras Shevchenko
2021 Member of the Academy, National Academy of Arts of Ukraine

2022 “Fountain of Exhaustion” Acqua Аlta. 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia (Venezia, Italy).

“The landscape you live in and your inner space, the overwhelming everyday need to combine your feelings with the reality. Reality that can be so often not the one you wish to be yours. But so what? It is not for us to choose it, but it is definitely for us to deal with it.” (Pavlo Makov)

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CHRISTIAN SCHWARZWALD

1971 * in Salzburg, lives in Vienna and Berlin.
He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and at the Academy of Fine Arts Athens, Greece.
Since 2017 he is a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.
Christian Schwarzwald works with drawings. His idea of drawing is that of an all-encompassing and unrestricted medium. Since drawing is everything to Schwarzwald, almost everything is drawn into his universe. Faces, abstract patterns, architectures, plants, objects, etc. are rigorously worked through and combined in blocks to create installations and entire spaces that embrace the visitor as they enter. A single drawing is no longer seen as just that, but as part of a more complex system of visual worlds. With an analytical mind, Schwarzwald creates an encyclopedic world of drawing that confronts our contemporary world, questioning and challenging its views.

Christian Schwarzwald’s work is committed to a broad concept of drawing, ranging from light sketches and notes to complex editions, paintings, wall drawings, and installations.