Artist: David Fesl
Exhibition title: The Concrete Boy
Venue: Georg Kargl, Georg Kargl Box, Vienna, Austria
Date: October 16 – November 21, 2020
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Georg Kargl, Vienna
you’re too precious, or an allure of a concrete boy.
by the lake, on the shore, in the shade of a paradigm shift. blame me for (my) love, immature, as you promise nothing. nothing which resists a void of this possibility. in a disguise, a concrete boy ain’t no roughness of the edge; just a sleek precision of a word, non-articulated, a word in a tabernacle of my palm, an organic treasure, hyper-frailty. concrete poetry is your carpentry of things, a touch, that never happened, an imprint (someone’s memory?). you. in the arms of syntaxes and diagrams, uncanny shells of speech, a beauty contest. envy, my adversary. me.
your object, over-caressed jewel of intangibility, a posthuman fetish on a surgery table of a speculative realism, an operatic spectacle of a biomorphic allure. you, hamletian king of infinite space, bounded in a nutshell; a semiologist-shaman (your intimacy intimidates as you undress behind the screen of an entangled form). alchemy is your poiesis; a guarantee of elasticity, its aqua viva. a matter en scène of a neo-dada assemblage: volumes and surfaces, vigorous subjects of a chance choreography, peripheral particles, rescued and tamed, of decay and oblivion, heroic figures of resilience. the blood of a poet? the concrete of a poet? fluid and solid, an alien phenomenology of a lyrical homo faber. I see aleph there, its enigma; mirror in a mirror, hysteria. a tiger and a galaxy; a daydream and its heterotopia. with an immaculate passion, you perform a sustainable desire for a world in decline; as it proliferates, a devotion is born (there is always a need for a new ritual). did you write another page, meanwhile? a new chapter, perhaps? ephemeral, as you are; radical, as you are to me – a monument of longing. your skin, translucent, a dionysian fest of tender metaphysics. do I deserve you? caterpillar, moon. everywhere, a melancholia. love needs to be reinvented (my favorite line). your habitat, an ontological altar of subversion, a derelict factory of carnivalesque objects (each one, real and sensual, a rehearsal of a homecoming); a wunderkamer, furnished with the amulets of self-empowerment and pride.
lure of an ecological ornament, temptation of a magic rite for a post-colonial dawn? allure of a savage mind, a bricoleur, his solitary practice – stream of consciousness – out of nothing communion of a provisional meaning? your means at hand – nostalgic everything – bricolage’s critical language of seduction. hybrids, chimeras, miniature monsters, trophies of a handyman, micro-architectural body in becoming, too eccentric to safeguard its finitude. coherence is a blessing, not a necessity; a myth of truth-making in denial. impossible perfection. you’re too precious; a panallurist, fabricator of objects in revolution (allure, the principle of such revolution, an engine for creation of objects, a communicator). only allure makes quantum leaps from one state of reality into the next by generating a new relation between objects. traveling with you, I embrace silence of your cosmic voice. moving on, we separate (I’m allured all over, down to bones). allure is the presence of objects to each other in absent form. turning on, I touch a porous skin of an inanimate matter, our future poetry of the everyday, another “potent” form, absence, rediscovered. your vehicle, allure, maneuvers between the sensual and real. the principle of all concreteness: allure is always the allure of concrete objects, not of universals. It is a process of concretion and not abstraction; you say, the toughest material is a human thinking. philosophy is less a creation of concepts than a creation of objects. you, imagine, a philosopher.
concrete boy is (not) a material girl (a fake). you sing softly, but firmly. hallelujah. tell me when it’s over. epiphanies do not last. your breath, a haiku. nothing really applies nor amplifies (self-annihilating nothing). you erase me, now and later, your kind of love, mispronounced. objects flow, signs morph. the world is gone. I will carry you. meanwhile. (I) disappear. farewell. all that is solid melts into air, a modernist defeat of a concrete boy, a bygone era. farewell, yet again, sanctity of slowness; its humbleness. unbearable romantics of emptiness. by the lake, on the shore, in the shade of a paradigm shift. you.
-Adam Budak
David Fesl, The Concrete Boy, 2020, exhibition view, Georg Kargl, Vienna
David Fesl, The Concrete Boy, 2020, exhibition view, Georg Kargl, Vienna
David Fesl, The Concrete Boy, 2020, exhibition view, Georg Kargl, Vienna
David Fesl, The Concrete Boy, 2020, exhibition view, Georg Kargl, Vienna
David Fesl, The Concrete Boy, 2020, exhibition view, Georg Kargl, Vienna
David Fesl, The Concrete Boy, 2020, exhibition view, Georg Kargl, Vienna
David Fesl, The Concrete Boy, 2020, exhibition view, Georg Kargl, Vienna
David Fesl, The Concrete Boy, 2020, exhibition view, Georg Kargl, Vienna
David Fesl, The Concrete Boy, 2020, exhibition view, Georg Kargl, Vienna
David Fesl, The Concrete Boy, 2020, exhibition view, Georg Kargl, Vienna
David Fesl, Untitled (Bonsai), 2020, fruit of Buddha coconut tree – Pterygota alata, animal bone, peanut, twisted twig of unknown bush, squared paper, leaf of common pear attacked by leaf rust, tip of garlic clove, pin, 16,5 x 13 x 8 cm
David Fesl, Untitled (Ultra Star), 2020, dried coffee bush root, bandage retainer, Dior Ultra Star 777 lipstick, Boheman glass beads, cotton thread, ground elder – Aegopodium podagraria, 11 x 17,5 x 10,5 cm
David Fesl, Untitled (Heel), 2020, high heel, peach stone – Prunus persica, surgical steel earrings, veneer of common oak – Quercus robur, period lacquer, 6,6 x 6,6 x 9,1 cm
David Fesl, Untitled (Bed), 2020, rusted handle of pitcher, cowhide, hair band, shell of garden snail – Cornu aspersum, tomato skin, skewer, double-sided quilt-cover button, skeleton of Jackfruit tree leaf – Artocarpus heterophyllus, 5 x 18,5 x 5,5 cm
David Fesl, Untitled (Trekker), 2020, fruit of Buddha coconut tree – Pterygota alata, yellow muskmelon seeds – Cucumis melo, trekking stick tip, root system of Norway maple – Acer platanoides, untwisted cotton thread, twig of wild cherry – Prunus avium, river pearls, Arabica coffee bean, pin, 8,3 x 10,5 x 7 cm
David Fesl, Untitled (Onion), 2020, red onion peel – Allium cepa, plastic sequins, super glue, silicone ends of interdental brushes, wood, olive marker fibres, fishing line, a small screw from a mobile phone, cotton thread, 8,5 x 23 x 4 cm
David Fesl, Untitled (Onion), 2020, red onion peel – Allium cepa, plastic sequins, super glue, silicone ends of interdental brushes, wood, olive marker fibres, fishing line, a small screw from a mobile phone, cotton thread, 8,5 x 23 x 4 cm
David Fesl, Untitled (Pocket’s Trouble), 2020, safety pins, a sleeve of a polyester shirt, Japanese glass beads, a dried stem of a water plant, organic dirt from a gutter, artificial bast bers, cotton thread, 10 x 19 x 3 cm
David Fesl, Untitled (Mascara), 2020, twig of European larch – Larix decidua, cotton thread, period metal beads, leaf of olive tree – Olea europaea, mascara, 3 x 32 x 2 cm
David Fesl, Untitled (Mascara), 2020, twig of European larch – Larix decidua, cotton thread, period metal beads, leaf of olive tree – Olea europaea, mascara, 3 x 32 x 2 cm
David Fesl, The Concrete Boy, 2020, exhibition view, Georg Kargl, Vienna
David Fesl, The Concrete Boy, 2020, exhibition view, Georg Kargl, Vienna
David Fesl, The Concrete Boy, 2020, exhibition view, Georg Kargl, Vienna
David Fesl, The Concrete Boy, 2020, exhibition view, Georg Kargl, Vienna
David Fesl, The Concrete Boy, 2020, exhibition view, Georg Kargl, Vienna
David Fesl, The Concrete Boy, 2020, exhibition view, Georg Kargl, Vienna
David Fesl, The Concrete Boy, 2020, exhibition view, Georg Kargl, Vienna
David Fesl, The Concrete Boy, 2020, exhibition view, Georg Kargl, Vienna
David Fesl, The Concrete Boy, 2020, exhibition view, Georg Kargl, Vienna
David Fesl, The Concrete Boy, 2020, exhibition view, Georg Kargl, Vienna
David Fesl, The Concrete Boy, 2020, exhibition view, Georg Kargl, Vienna
David Fesl, The Concrete Boy, 2020, exhibition view, Georg Kargl, Vienna
David Fesl, The Concrete Boy, 2020, exhibition view, Georg Kargl, Vienna
David Fesl, The Concrete Boy, 2020, exhibition view, Georg Kargl, Vienna
David Fesl, Untitled (Ultra Star), 2020, dried coffee bush root, bandage retainer, Dior Ultra Star 777 lipstick, Boheman glass beads, cotton thread, ground elder – Aegopodium podagraria, 11 x 17,5 x 10,5 cm
David Fesl, Untitled (Ultra Star), 2020, dried coffee bush root, bandage retainer, Dior Ultra Star 777 lipstick, Boheman glass beads, cotton thread, ground elder – Aegopodium podagraria, 11 x 17,5 x 10,5 cm
David Fesl, Untitled (Bonsai), 2020, fruit of Buddha coconut tree – Pterygota alata, animal bone, peanut, twisted twig of unknown bush, squared paper, leaf of common pear attacked by leaf rust, tip of garlic clove, pin, 16,5 x 13 x 8 cm
David Fesl, Untitled (Heel), 2020, high heel, peach stone – Prunus persica, surgical steel earrings, veneer of common oak – Quercus robur, period lacquer, 6,6 x 6,6 x 9,1 cm
David Fesl, Untitled (Heel), 2020, high heel, peach stone – Prunus persica, surgical steel earrings, veneer of common oak – Quercus robur, period lacquer, 6,6 x 6,6 x 9,1 cm
David Fesl, Untitled (Bed), 2020, rusted handle of pitcher, cowhide, hair band, shell of garden snail – Cornu aspersum, tomato skin, skewer, double-sided quilt-cover button, skeleton of Jackfruit tree leaf – Artocarpus heterophyllus, 5 x 18,5 x 5,5 cm
David Fesl, Untitled (Bed), 2020, rusted handle of pitcher, cowhide, hair band, shell of garden snail – Cornu aspersum, tomato skin, skewer, double-sided quilt-cover button, skeleton of Jackfruit tree leaf – Artocarpus heterophyllus, 5 x 18,5 x 5,5 cm
David Fesl, Untitled (Trekker), 2020, fruit of Buddha coconut tree – Pterygota alata, yellow muskmelon seeds – Cucumis melo, trekking stick tip, root system of Norway maple – Acer platanoides, untwisted cotton thread, twig of wild cherry – Prunus avium, river pearls, Arabica coffee bean, pin, 8,3 x 10,5 x 7 cm
David Fesl, Untitled (Pocket’s Trouble), 2020, safety pins, a sleeve of a polyester shirt, Japanese glass beads, a dried stem of a water plant, organic dirt from a gutter, artificial bast bers, cotton thread, 10 x 19 x 3 cm
