In the sensual, aesthetically highly charged installations by the Austrian duo Jakob Lena Knebl and Ashley Hans Scheirl, nothing is as it seems: across all floors of the collection building, they create walk-in, seductive worlds in a mix of sculpture, painting, design, staging, photography and film that captivate visitors.
In these "spaces of desire", Knebl and Scheirl refer to the history of art and design in order to highlight their role in the construction of identity and negotiate it in a contemporary context.
In doing so, the artists manage the tightrope act of combining fetishism and humor in surprising ways time and again. They take bodies apart and reassemble them. This diversity of works and beings challenges the boundaries of 'good' taste. The duo works with multi-layered references. In this exhibition, the spectrum ranges from the grotesque to cyber aesthetics. There are references to Mary Shelley, Ada Lovelace, Luigi Colani, Hector Guimard and others.
Jakob Lena Knebl, Cordula's Sister, sculpture, 2023 Courtesy de l'artiste, Galerie Loevenbruck (Paris) & Georg Kargl Fine Arts (Vienne)
Jakob Lena Knebl and Ashley Hans Scheirl work both separately and as a duo. They exhibited together at the 15th Biennale de Lyon (2019) at the invitation of the Palais de Tokyo and at the Kunsthaus Bregenz (2020). They represented Austria at the 59th Venice Biennale (2022). The exhibition was created in cooperation with the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, where Knebl & Scheirl's exhibition DOPPELGANGER! was on view from October 2023 to January 2024. The installations from the Palais de Tokyo will also be shown in modified form in the Falckenberg Collection. Further works and installations developed specifically for the exhibition at the Falckenberg Collection will expand the exhibition, which will occupy all floors of the collection building in Harburg.
The exhibition will be complemented by works by students from Prof. Angela Bulloch's Time Based Media class at the HFBK and works by students from Jakob Lena Knebl's Transmedia Art class at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. In addition, works selected by the artists from the Falckenberg Collection will be on display.
April 27 to September 15, 2024
www.deichtorhallen.de
Jakob Lena Knebl & Ashley Hans Scheirl, view of the exhibition Doppelganger!, Palais de Tokyo, Courtesy of the artists. Photo: Aurélien Mole
