Exhibitions are temporary; some last a few months or a few weeks and some only a few days. The title 64hrs is a calculation of the actual hourly duration of the show, by highlighting the temporal conditions of the exhibition make it seem more ephemeral than it is and thereby questioning the value of artistic production in terms of labor.
For the exhibition Penker presents A/I (Anna/Ida) sculptures which can be used as tables or hung on the wall and function as display elements. She has selected the A0 poster format to present a selection of her collages produced during her residency at WIELS in 2017. These collages which are wallpapered onto the Project Room walls, depict a diverse an assortment of historical & cultural thinkers (such Claude Levi-Strauss, Walter Benjamin, Rosa Luxemburg, Edward Said... ) depicted in a Split-Repesentation method developed by Penker in response to a Levi-Strauss essay entitled „Split Representation in the Art of Asia and America“.
Collaboration is an important element of Penker‘s practice. She has taken part in various artist groups such as Viennese Lounge (1998-2003), FO/GO Lab (2001-07) and Dada Da Academy (2008-), where Penker and Sirbiladze collaborated on numerous occasions, later followed by a joint presentation of their works in Athens (2018).
Tamuna Sirlbiladze is represented here by three abstract works on canvas which reveal here interest in automatic drawings which function more on a loose symbolic level… functioning more like sketch books, the oil stick drawings have a more immediate emotional component allowing the unconciuos to come to the surface - these works could be understood as typically Vienesse. Penker & Sirlbiladze had a close dialogue during the period that these works were made.
Courtesy Elisabeth Penker
