LIMBUS

To go against systems and forms of control, to really live and not only survive the physical and existential spaces of everyday life. To move on and break free, celebrating the uncertain. Clemens Tschurtschenthaler develops his own theory of doubt and limbo, drawing inspiration from the homonymous scenario of the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, where innocent souls are destined to linger, suspended in time. On the restless edge of this cyclical and nebulous space, the artist crafts a landscape of contradictions, creating a confusing atmosphere in which perceptions overlap and blend. The work, conceived as a traversable self-supporting structure rotating around itself, clearly recalls urban architectures, devices and spaces, with a reference to security turnstiles which regulate access in stations, metros, banks, and others public buildings. The well-known concept of “non-place”, introduced by Marc Augé to describe contemporary spaces of transience and passage where all forms of connections are anonymous, here is reversed into a place which instead is receptive to human and emotional experiences. A three-part sound composition produced by the artist accompanies and guides the interaction with the work; emergence, interruption and reprise, it marks the rhythms of the space articulating a dynamic environment, wrapped in the eternal loop of circular time. LIMBUS functions as gateway to nothingness, as if it was placed on a threshold that, when crossed, doesn't cause any physical changes, it rather generates unease, dystopian absence, doubts, hopes, flows of consciousness: what to leave behind what to expect next what to do before where to go and when, when to return. The installation translates a psychological state ruled by uncertainty, into spatial movement and physical perception: the experience of and within the space of the artwork represents a prelude to an upside-down world, where a tool designed to control leads to collapse, where distinctions between inside and outside vanish in a loop – in here, a step made forward brings you back to the start, to ground zero. It is, perhaps, on the brink of this erratic roaming that illusions were born, along with metaphysic attempts to explain the world or imagine a new one. To make sense of this roaming and to their fate, humans created myths and places of afterlife. As if to explore and restore those timeless expectations and feelings, Clemens Tschurtschenthaler accentuates the repetition of gestures, sounds, and forms to induce disorientation. His work is an invitation to wander within a space-time capsule, on the margins of silent private turmoil. - Clemens Tschurtschenthaler (1988, Merano, IT), lives and works in Vienna. In 2021 he graduated in Media Art at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. Selected solo and duo exhibitions include: 2023, Nature Is Mental at Cache Vienna, (AT); 2022, Café Memoriam at Ve.Sch Kunstverein Vienna (AT); 2021, INVERSO at DWDS Bregenz (AT); heat of the moment, with Felix Dennhardt at VENT Gallery Vienna (AT); Selected group exhibitions: 2023, speculare at Eck Museum of Art Brunico (IT); 2021, building the barn at Kunstverein Schattendorf (AT); 2019, set_of_invalid_context at LLLLLL Verein für Kunst Vienna (AT); 2017, PROCESSING at Vienna Art Week GPLcontemporary Gallery (AT). www.clemens-tschurtschenthaler.com (Supported by Federal Ministry Republic of Austria - Arts, Culture, Civil Service and Sport)