Two person exhibition at Galerie Reinthaler, Vienna, with Catharina Bond.
10 November 2023 - 12 January 2024
Galerie Reinthaler is delighted to present “Tourist”, an exhibition of works by Catharina Bond and Kenji Lim that probes and investigates notions and understandings of experience, place and belonging, as a temporary visitor.
Souvenirs, selfies, snapshots and memories, experiences and cheques to pay; these are the currencies of the tourist experience. The vacation and the accompanying expectations of entertainment, beauty, value and escape, shape the tourist’s view of the world whilst on this break from the everyday. While the tourist takes these things for themselves, what do they bring? What can we see through a tourist’s eyes that might change our awareness of the world as we travel through life? What lies beyond the edge of the picture frame? What makes memories and experiences special and unique, and are these things worth chasing?
The tourist takes snapshots of life. Experiences are simultaneously “strange” and “typical”. There is an absurdity to the memories that we create as tourists, as we cut neat slices of time and place that bear little resemblance to any local reality. Within the exhibition, pictorial works point to representations of these experiences, while sculptural works act as souvenirs and keepsakes, as well as active and involved spectators and characters. Bond’s sculptures point to the strangeness of these links, as ephemeral touch is congealed into a tangible object, and emblematic local delicacies are personified, giving them a latent agency. Lim’s paintings take the idealised and romanticised landscape, but displace the viewer, rendering non-humans as active participants both on and within the surface of the canvas. His sculptural pieces observe, interact, and activate. They are objects from the gift shop come to life, or plucked from the scenic viewpoint. They continue to blossom and evolve far from home.
In creating the exhibition, Bond will be hosting Lim in her home in Vienna. As friends separated by a continent, Bond’s hospitality in her hometown and Lim’s role as a visitor, literally a tourist, adds another dimension to the exhibition. Geography, culture and language play roles in making one feel “inside” or “outside” of a place and time. However, to some degree we are all tourists on earth, localised to our time and place, able to “make” and “take” memories. But after we are gone, the world will continue on without us, as it did before we arrived.
10 November 2023 - 12 January 2024
Galerie Reinthaler is delighted to present “Tourist”, an exhibition of works by Catharina Bond and Kenji Lim that probes and investigates notions and understandings of experience, place and belonging, as a temporary visitor.
Souvenirs, selfies, snapshots and memories, experiences and cheques to pay; these are the currencies of the tourist experience. The vacation and the accompanying expectations of entertainment, beauty, value and escape, shape the tourist’s view of the world whilst on this break from the everyday. While the tourist takes these things for themselves, what do they bring? What can we see through a tourist’s eyes that might change our awareness of the world as we travel through life? What lies beyond the edge of the picture frame? What makes memories and experiences special and unique, and are these things worth chasing?
The tourist takes snapshots of life. Experiences are simultaneously “strange” and “typical”. There is an absurdity to the memories that we create as tourists, as we cut neat slices of time and place that bear little resemblance to any local reality. Within the exhibition, pictorial works point to representations of these experiences, while sculptural works act as souvenirs and keepsakes, as well as active and involved spectators and characters. Bond’s sculptures point to the strangeness of these links, as ephemeral touch is congealed into a tangible object, and emblematic local delicacies are personified, giving them a latent agency. Lim’s paintings take the idealised and romanticised landscape, but displace the viewer, rendering non-humans as active participants both on and within the surface of the canvas. His sculptural pieces observe, interact, and activate. They are objects from the gift shop come to life, or plucked from the scenic viewpoint. They continue to blossom and evolve far from home.
In creating the exhibition, Bond will be hosting Lim in her home in Vienna. As friends separated by a continent, Bond’s hospitality in her hometown and Lim’s role as a visitor, literally a tourist, adds another dimension to the exhibition. Geography, culture and language play roles in making one feel “inside” or “outside” of a place and time. However, to some degree we are all tourists on earth, localised to our time and place, able to “make” and “take” memories. But after we are gone, the world will continue on without us, as it did before we arrived.
