On Saturday, April 24, 2021, at 3pm, Quartz Studio is pleased to present …like ink in milk, the first solo exhibition in Italy by the Austrian artist Gernot Wieland (Horn, Austria, 1968), curated by Zasha Colah. On this occasion is presented the video Ink in Milk (2018), which won the Best Film Award at VIII Kinodot Experimental Film Festival St. Petersburg (2020), a Special Mention at the 36th Short Film Festival Hamburg (2019), and the EMAF Media Art Award of the German Film Critics at the European Media Art Festival Osnabrück (2019). The film has been given Italian subtitles for the special occasion of the exhibition at Quartz Studio in Turin, after its presentation at Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen in Switzerland, Salzburger Kunstverein in Wien and following the publication of a monograph of his work, Gernot Wieland Thievery and Songs, published by Salzburger Kunstverein and Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen (2020). 

The “I” voice, yes! That is the decisive point, whoever makes sure of having or speaking as an “I”, always determines a “you”, determines the other. – Gernot Wieland

(A rejoinder). In a detail from An Attempt to Circumnavigate the Pictorial Truth of Gernot Wieland (2020), the first drawing encountered in his recent monograph, the psychoanalytic tensions of the “I” speaking-voice split first into Id/Es and Ego/Ich; onto which, like a Rosetta Stone, Wieland splits the elements of the book’s cover-image, a still from, Ink in Milk (2018), between hand and held crystal. Subject holding object, as if a parallel within the self. 

In this video-film work, the “my uncle” of the film, who invents a form of empathy by performing crystals with the whole body, is perhaps also an unconscious biographic narration of a 20th-century cultural persona. Subject (“my uncle”) transforms to object (“crystal”), transforms to subject (“cultural persona”), as if a parallel within the self. 

The narrator, the “I“ speaking-voice, recollects how he learned from his uncle to use his body to imitate crystalline formations in his youth (while the desaturated light of Super 8 film, the saturated pleasure of plasticine, the fog-sound of horns, watercolour palettes, potato prints, and stick-figure drawings, unquiet childhood Id/Es residues of memory) as a form of adaption to power-structures. The speaking-voice parses and splits all selves: the confessional fictional self, Id, Ego, the autobiographic fictional self, the unconscious biographic narration, memories that cause dissolution (and revolt?), till the other is just one more estranged split of the self. – Zasha Colah 

Gernot Wieland (Horn, Austria, 1968) studied at Universität der Künste, Berlin and Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Wien. He has recently participated in Videonale, Festival for Video und Time-Based Art, Kunstmuseum Bonn (2021); Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen, St. Gallen (2020, solo); Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg (2020, solo); ANIMA–Taiwan International Video Art Exhibition, Hong-Gah Museum, Taipei (2020); The Law is a White Dog, TULCA Festival of Visual Arts, Galway (2020); Wait and See, IFFR - International Film Festival, Rotterdam (2020); Zoo Cosmos, Casa Conti /Ange Leccia Art Center, Oletta (2020); 15th IndieLisboa - International Independent Film Festival, Lisbon (2020); 12x12, IBB Video Space at Berlinische Galerie, Berlin (2020, solo); Videoart at Midnight, Berlin, (2020); Risentimento / Ressentiment, Merano Arte, Merano (2020); Grand Hotel Abyss, Steirischer Herbst Festival, Graz (2019); Belmacz, London (2019, solo); Vdrome, London (2019); Monitoring, Kasseler Kunstverein, Kassel (2018); Zeitspuren, Centre d´art Pasquart, Biel (2018); a lecture performance at OGR, Turin (2018) and in Shame, Künstlerhaus Bremen, Bremen (2018). The artist is represented by Belmacz, London (UK).

The exhibition is kindly supported in collaboration with the Austrian Cultural Forum, Milan, in partnership with the Department of Visual Arts and Curatorial Studies, Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti (NABA) Milano, and Dipartimento di Lingue Letterature Straniere Culture Moderne, Università degli Studi di Torino. 

Quartz Studio and Gernot Wieland would like to thank Mauro Maraschi for translations, Konstantin von Sichart for video editing, the team of Cripta747, Barbara Casavecchia and Luca Cerizza.