Manfred Erjautz: Exploring Identity and Public Space in Contemporary Art at Secession

This exhibition features the work of Manfred Erjautz, exploring the individual's experience within the complex interplay of public and private spheres. The exhibition includes site-specific interventions and sculptural photography that question personal positioning in a world of perceived relationships.

The works of Manfred Erjautz delve into the individual's navigation of constantly intersecting and mutually irritating realms of the internal and external, the private and public. These pieces make compensatory attempts to establish a positioning of the self within these fields, thereby countering a perceived feeling of being overwhelmed. Continuing from earlier works that highlighted the potential emptiness of aesthetic codes through the accumulative use of logos, Manfred Erjautz developed his own logo for the exhibition at Secession. A neon lamp formed from his initials, ME, hangs at the base of a streetlamp that pierces the Secession's roof structure. Through the paradoxical lighting situation, a faint WE appears as a symmetrical shadow of ME on the floor, symbolizing the self projecting a community that it simultaneously outshines. The exhibition questions the dimension of personality in relation to the public, how public space is constructed when all discretion about the person disappears, and how one can position oneself and move within a world of seemingly superficial relationships. In line with these questions, Erjautz's intervention in the exhibition space involves replacing the door in the rear wall of the main room with a glass pane, opening up and extending the space. This grants a view of a marble snowman placed in the exterior area. The suggestion of proximity, the apparent possibility of access to the garden, and the simultaneous insurmountable distance created by this architectural intervention are juxtaposed with the outdoor sculpture 'Gefangen in der Gegenwart' (Trapped in the Present). The view cutting through the main room is further developed in a contrapuntal manner with large-format photographs showing window and door situations, among other things. Their sculptural-architectural formation constructs a complex spatiality that dissolves the fixed viewer position of central perspective. The atmospheric, light-drenched passages are the result of a long image-finding process, in which Manfred Erjautz first notes his motifs through drawing before seeking a corresponding counterpart in reality and then capturing it photographically. In their diffuse modulation and blurriness, the images demonstrate how much the world outside is a reflection of one's own imagination and can no longer be focused from the space of thought with the gaze of the knowing subject. Rebellion against an elusive exterior and rage expressed through violence as a reaction to the violated protective zone of the private is thematized in the slide series 'Gunshot'. Without a recognizable opponent, the artist shoots around in his studio with a Lego rifle he built, until he finally collapses to the ground from a setback whose origin is not clarified. If no counterpart can be unmasked, the result is exhaustion; the act of force is consumed, the bullet gets stuck in nothingness.

The page mentions "tickets" and links to a ticketing platform, suggesting that admission may require a ticket or booking, but specific details about pricing or requirements are not provided on this page. Visitors are directed to the official ticketing portal for further information.