The Art of Surfacing at the Halle für Kunst Steiermark highlights the multifaceted work of Austrian artist Eva Ursprung as a poetic, critical, and sensually charged reflection on water, change, and the deeply hidden structures of our world.
The exhibition brings together works by an artist who has been working across media for decades, constantly opening up new perspectives in music, video, performance, and installation. The focus is on the element of water—not only as a physical substance, but as a powerful metaphor for change, connection, separation, and transformation. Water flows, shapes landscapes, sustains life, and at the same time harbors destructive forces. In Ursprung's work, it becomes a canvas for ecological, social, and geopolitical processes that often lie beneath the surface of the visible.
The title The Art of Surfacing refers to the tension between the surface and what lies beneath it: between consciousness and the unconscious, between everyday perception and the deeper forces that shape our time. Origin brings repressed truths to light and makes them visible—whether as an allegory in a water image, as a symbol of ecological threats, or as a trace of social entanglements.
Eva Ursprung, Indigo Haven, 2023 Video, sound, 5:11 min. © HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark
The presentation opens up a broad perspective: from narrative video works to kinetic installations and collaborative projects, it traces the fluidities and ruptures of our time and invites visitors to experience the complexity of transformations, identities, and global interconnections with their senses.
In its multifaceted approach, the exhibition combines aesthetic sensuality with political reflection, creating a space in which art functions as a medium for recognition and collective reflection on ecological, social, and cultural challenges.
February 7 to April 19, 2026
