Johannes Vogl (born in 1981) makes strange sculptures and machines from everyday objects. Rotating metal rods on a ribbed roof that let zip ties drum on the rooftop like raindrops. An old slide projector equipped with a pendulum clock lets the moon rise and set and a pair of glasses with a little plastic bottle shifts from a visual aid to a wine drinking aid.

The objects’ outer appearances are almost unaltered. Suiting their material, the aesthetic of the works are mostly rough, crude and unpolished. The artistic transformation of the objects happens by reinterpreting their function or changing their mode of operation. The artifacts and apparatuses don’t serve the humans any longer, don’t perform any meaningful tasks, but are stuck in endless loops and monotonous soliloquies. The title Machinery Misfits characterizes the works as mechanical outsiders, as oddballs, that follow their own rules. The viewer gets baited by the illusion of the familiar and in the next moment gets rejected in bewilderment. The relation of the human and the sculpture, subject and object, the observer and the observed shifts in favor of the material world. These objects are no longer just passive basic commodities, but develop a strange momentum and inner logic.

In the detachment of the objects from their usual contexts and layers of meaning lies a liberating momentum, that leaves room for poetic associations. The surface of an old ribbed roof, overgrown with moss and eroded by the elements, suddenly seems picturesque and beautiful. A curtain slightly swaying to and fro covers a whole wall of a room, the light shining from underneath it, however, promises one or many potential worlds lying beyond.

Kunstpalais presents Johannes Vogl’s first institutional solo exhibition that focuses on the works of the last three years. For the exhibition, the artist created three original works that will be presented to the public for the very first time. In addition to the exhibition an extensive catalog with numerous illustrations, accompanying texts and interviews with the artist will be published.

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