Austria Pavilion at the Biennale: Surrealism Retro Ping Pong

The echoes of surrealism and ideas that seeped from counterculture into the mainstream in the 1970s are the conceptual center of the Austrian Biennale Pavilion. However, in practice, this is not a quotation path, but a brightly-colored sequence of rooms where the aesthetic pieces and ideas ensure an absolutely desirable squall.

Not only did Knebl and Scheirl quote from a range of classic living room catalogs and fabric sample books for interior designers, but not least from each other: the artists, who have been in a private partnership since 2005, constantly play the table tennis aesthetic with ideas.

The network passes directly through the symmetrically constructed pavilion: one has its lands in each half. The main difference is that Scheirl is a painter; Its composition is a cabin image, made up of intertwined scenery elements, in the foreground a curtain drawn on the side that invites you to enter in a very classic way. Moreover, three canvases, which in turn flow into the background of the background, demonstrate Scheirl’s remarkable ability to combine the most diverse styles of painting – from realism to gestural abstraction – into one picture.

For her part, Knebl is coordinating the bodies, sculptures, and fashion creations—in the suite, for example, those sculptures reminiscent of surrealist Hans Bilmer, made up of voluptuous limbs set on flowing pedestals borrowed from designer Verner Panton, are striking. But T-shirts bearing the slogan “Atomic Power No Thank You” or featuring the Krautrock logo can also turn heads.