SCARY MONSTERS and NICE SPRITES - 29.3 - 24.4.2025 - Lenaugasse 6, 1080 Vienna, Artisserie

Fotocredit: photo Art Collection Schlichtner

SCARY MONSTERS and NICE SPRITES

Opening: Saturday March 29, 2025 / 6:00 pm – 10:00 pm

Concert: Saturday April 5, 2025 / 7 pm y Alexander Zaloopin

Finissage: Thursday April 24th, 2025 / 6:00 pm – 10:00 pm / electronic music performance by WIC - Wave Improvisers Cluster + DJs

Opening times: every Saturday 2:00 pm - 8:00 pm

Location: ARTISSERIE, Lenaugasse 6, 1080 Vienna

Artists:

Fantasy creatures are currently making a comeback in the visual arts and are a strong sign in difficult times.

The question of continuously changing assumptions about "reality", the "normal" and "the imaginary", the "heterogeneous" has repeatedly played a role. When was something fantastic perceived as real and when was it no longer? This goes hand in hand with the fact that fantastic functionalization only becomes possible when something that was previously real suddenly seems impossible. With contemporary art, the function of fantastic representation has changed significantly, whereas previously frightening creatures, devils, etc. served to maintain existing systems of power. Today, the invention of figures and art practices are much more independent of narrative, functionalization and commissioners of art, even if images and pictorial traditions certainly still have an impact. The rules of combining the uncombinable are constantly being renegotiated, including the perception of the fantastic (amusement or discomfort). Realities can be questioned through negation, alienation or subversion. Thus the unreal becomes the new reality, and fantasy becomes the new reason.

Keywords for contextualisation:

Fantasy creatures / mythical creatures / monsters / cute creatures / masks / fantasy animals / talking animals / dragons / beasts / goblins / fairies / mermaids / elemental spirits / demons / ghosts / nature spirits / mountain spirits / house spirits / black Drude / Trut / Schrat / hybrid creatures / witches / Krampus / Perchten / loner creatures / mummy / vampire / werewolf / zombie / doll / costume / Wodan / caricature / doppelganger / cannibals / robots / cyborgs / human as machine / artificial human / acephalus / Victor Frankenstein / Automatons and androids / Double / Body discourses / Tolerance / Gender / Identity / Self-determination / Drag / Femme Fatal / Crossdressing / Role play / Prince / Princess / Wish / Desire / Nightmare / Fear / Trauma / Memento mori / Uncaniness / Miracle / Disgust / Amusement / Humor / Supernatural / Birth / Death / Dance of Death / History / Heresy / Religion / Physiologus / Hermeticism / Inquisition / Monad / Alchemy / Transcendence / Metaphysics / Fantasy / Cyber / Myths / Fairy tales / Legends / Spells / Magic / Dreams / Cosmology / Occultism / Spiritualism / channeling / transmigration of souls / belief / reincarnation / reality / fiction / judgment / imagination / memory / phantasmata / doctrine of the soul / dream interpretation / impossible versus rational / Gothic Castle / curse of the pharaohs / science fiction / new Biedermeier / escapism / posthumanism / digital transhumanism / transhumanism / genetic engineering / digital realm / fake / boundaries / space / labyrinth / metaverse / cybernetics / time travel / parallel realities / passages / thresholds / superstition / horror / utopia and dystopia / miracle block / allegory / symbols / social media / AI / metaverse / avatar / Trojan horse / computer games / Coincidence / World as construct and mimesis / fantastic world constructions / Parallel world / Alchemy / Clones / Biotechnology / Metamorphosis / Simulacrum / Othering / Categories / Hybridity / Diversity / Third Space / Liminal spaces / Secondary world / Center versus Periphery / Count Dracula / Perpetrator-victim reversal / Stereotypes / Racism / Sexism / Body shaming / Lookism / Dysmorphophobia / Culture of remembrance / Imperialism and ethnological analysis categories / Fantastic journey / Exoticism / Orientalism / Cloud, mud and rock images / Tree structures / Mythology / Bible / Bestiary / Mannerism / Arcimboldo / Hieronymus Bosch / Trompe-l’œil / Rationality and progress discourses / Romanticism / Symbolism / Futurism / Surrealism / Magical realism / magico realismo / fantastic realism / Tik-Tok of Oz / Nippon Animation / Manga / Bad Painting / Tattoo / Graffiti / Hyperrealism / Optimism

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