Welcome I

Eva Ertl · Erika Kassnel-Henneberg · Katarina Sopčić

Exhibition from 14.4 – 03.05.2023

galerieGEDOKmuc, Schleißheimer Str. 61, 80797 München

Opening on 13.04.2023, 7 pm
Tue to Fri 3 p.m. – 6 p.m., and Sat/Sun 3 p.m. – 6 p.m.

“The preservation of memories, moments of life and human traces, as well as a related sensitive sensing and overlaying of different levels of reality, connects the works of the three new members.” https://gedok-muc.de/

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TransHumance

Middle / end of 2023

Lavagna / IT

“CON-TEMPORARY Art Observatorium was born on one side for the need to guide collectors and lovers with a vision that is attentive and directly involved in the art world, which today has deeply mutated for the social, economical and technological epochal changes, and on the other side to follow meaningful artists and make them grow their personal paths, promoting exhibitions coherent to the international artistic panorama that could grasp, create and anticipate the contemporary expression, beside dealing with human and social fundamental thematics to prevail over the futility and leave meaningful testimonies of our times.”

http://ctao.eu

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Avalon 1+2

The (golden) apple was and is highly symbolic in many cultures: be it as a symbol for eternal youth, eternal life, for love, fertility, paradise and the fall of man, and most recently as an “item” in the popular game Minecraft. The word “Avalon” has many meanings, but here it refers to the island of Avalon (Gallic-Indo-Germanic abal = apple) from Celtic mythology, which was regarded as paradise.

In an indeterminate room under a blue sky, we circle around two faceless avatars with a golden apple in the middle. Like in a surreal dream, we find ourselves in an endless loop in which the figures display a strange behaviour. Everything seems to revolve around this apple, which in the end remains out of reach for everyone.

1+2: Both videos show the same scene, but from different angles.

This video installation is modified site-specifically. The idea is that the virtual space shows the immediate exhibition environment.

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Post Mortem

2023, video with sound, 2:40 min

“(…) It is difficult to define the spatial dimensions of memory. It is there, the room of my childhood, which I am still tidying and which is still dying, at the same time as its inhabitants, – their mortal shell.. (…)” Tadeusz Kantor

Many of our efforts are aimed at overcoming death, be it out of medical, scientific, philosophical or religious motivation. What is not yet possible in reality is all the more lived out in artistic fiction. What-if scenarios are thought through to the end with the growing realisation that nothing good would come of it. In the style of Tadeusz Kantor’s “Dead Class” and his theatre of death, I bring a school class back to life post mortem.

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Uncanny Valley – Reviews

“(…) And the latest exhibition at the Neue Galerie in the Höhmannhaus also takes a close look at AI and ChatGPT – as the first of three artistic contributions to this theme there. Erika Kassnel-Henneberg, a gilder, restorer, designer, Augsburg university lecturer and artist who was born in 1973 and lives in Diedorf, raises a number of deliberately open questions on the basis of seven videos and several Polaroid photos. If one faces these questions, thoughtfulness, even unease fills the rooms. Certainly, the effects of AI and ChatGPT are the subject of lively and controversial discussion – and yet (for the time being?) amazement and curiosity about the new technology seem to outweigh any misgivings.(…)” Rüdiger Heinze, Künstliche Intelligenz: Unbehagen im Höhmannhaus, Augsburger Allgemeine vom 16.02.2023

“(…)Can and may we bring people back to life through old photographs? Can we enjoy portraits of people who never existed? And do we still need people at all to perform human acts?

Erika Kassnel-Henneberg’s works do not provide answers, but they ask the right questions. With AI-generated images based on old photographs or her own voice commands, with footage material of dancers and robots. In addition, she experiments with her own biographical elements. The result is an artistic (or artificial) aesthetic observation of the current state of virtualisation, in which even the good old Lego brick has its place as an analogue pixel.(…)” Manuel Schedl, Nicht-Existenzen, A3 Kultur vom 13.02.2023

Foto: Manuel Schedl

Exhibition view

Artist talk

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Uncanny Valley – Artist Talk

On 23 February 2023, an artist talk took place in the rooms of the Neue Galerie im Höhmannhaus, moderated by Dr. Thomas Elsen, director of the Neue Galerie im Höhmannhaus. The event lasted approx. 90 min.

Excerpt: about the Lego survey

Excerpt: Erika, where is your Uncanny Valley?

Excerpt: about Deep Paula

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Memorabilia

Polaroid and AI-generated motifs form a symbiosis as testimonies of a possible past.

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Deep Vanitas

What is real? What is unique? Polaroid photography embodied both for a long time. Today, it is experiencing a renaissance both in its original form with the help of old Polaroid cameras from flea markets and in hybrid form, i.e. analogue-digital, app-controlled or even entirely digital.

Here, nothing is real: for this work, I let an AI generate thirty-three portraits based on baroque models. Therefore neither the scenes nor the people depicted ever existed. And yet the Polaroid as a medium lends this work something plausible and authentic.

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