Sebastian Mittl at Loggia

Artist: Sebastian Mittl

Exhibition title: TEKTONICAKE

Organised by: Yein Lee

Venue: Loggia, Vienna, Austria

Date: August 19 – September 10, 2021

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Loggia

Like staring through a kaleidoscope it’s psychedelic and controlled at the same time, harbouring both freedom and the desire for wildness as well as the horror of an unyielding, merciless bureaucracy. Both chaotic and systematical, like patterns refusing symmetry and thus revolting against their very premise of existence. Perfection and solidity is being sacrificed for fluidity and disobedience. And as they twist and turn and bend and contort around themselves they form bodies made up of limbs, that stretches and contracts within the same movement. Like a pile of wiggling worms bating you into biting the hook, or a plate of spaghetti bolognese with the attitude of a teenager experiencing their first intoxication. Everything breathes and pulsates, like an infected wound, or a thumb accidentally hit with a hammer. Everything grows, and it grows on top of and into each other. And as they grow these bodies reaches and expands towards one another, as if driven by the desire to feel a familiar touch. They grow and they merge beyond the point of where the question whether this is symbiotic or parasitic feels relevant to ask. this entanglement dissolves all essential boundaries between them. Distinction is lost but at least they’re no longer alone. A log is a bacteria is a road is a body is a society. There are no roses anymore.

And as one travels along these spiralling tentacle-like paths one realises that this road leads to nowhere but back to itself. Like dead ends being looped or a boa constrictor strangling itself. As if designed by a city planner overcome by a sudden contempt for functionality and with nothing to lose. A bureaucrat gone mad and as a result fucking the system he’s supposed to maintain and reproduce.