Exhibition Series
Alltagskultur und Gegenwartskunst im museumORTH
curated by Hilde Fuchs
from May 20 to November 1 2012

The Viennese media and performance artist Oliver Hangl arranged a number of experiments in which he explores the phenomenon of dual perception and duplication. When linear perspective was introduced in the Renaissance, pictorial narrative became more subjective. From this point forward, beholders began to look at a certain motif as if through the eyes of the artist. The different sizes of figures also merely represented the distance between figures, and no longer their social status.

In this project, Oliver Hangl unhinges the motifs of linear perspective and the grid. The Latin word individuum describes that which is indivisible, while offshoots from a common gene pool are “dividuals.” In this exhibition, Oliver Hangl presents an absurd theater of “dividuals” in a spectacular tactile, audio, and visual performance of pairs, doubles, and lookalikes. The human organism is based on a symmetrical construction. We are physically equipped with two cerebral hemispheres, two arms, two legs, two eyes, two ears, and so forth. Without our pairs of sensory organs, spatial orientation would be virtually impossible. We hear and see in stereo. The gap between our eyes enables our brain to estimate distances. The ears on opposite sides of our heads make it possible to locate the source of sounds.

Oliver Hangl works with technical apparatuses that avail themselves of these dual perception phenomena. He focuses on the idea of duplication by selecting certain motifs and technologies. In addition, individual works are mirrored and arranged in pairs, so that each is juxtaposed with a twin. Instead of a perfect copy, the artist is rather interested in the small mistakes, the unavoidable irregularities, the phase shift, the static in the system.
These works are therefore ultimately generated in the minds of the beholders. The left and right images always reveal something different; thus, it is when the two are seen together as a whole that ghosts and double beings appear. The stereo photographs in the windows were produced exclusively for this exhibition by Oliver Hangl with the help of Orth’s inhabitants. Using different means of expression, Oliver Hangl presents a setting that appeals to different senses through installations, sculptures, poems, pop songs, short dramas, photographs, and performances. Oliver Hangl addresses this extremely complex and multi-facetted theme with humor and irony by employing strategies (some artistic) that can be intermittently interpreted as comments, direct quotes or imitations, thus creating an intriguing web of cultural and art historical references.
(Norbert Pfaffenbichler)