Taking MY STAGE IS YOUR DOMAIN as her title, the Viennese video, photographic and installation artist Lisa Truttmann designs potential spaces for imagining the unrepresentable. In keeping with the principle of “imagineering”—the development of (visual) imagery according to subjective ideas, which she describes as the central leitmotif of her work—she combines documentary material and fictional scenarios and in the process draws near to people, moments in time, and places. The exhibition series APPLIED ARTS. NOW has until now focused on formations from design and architecture; with MY STAGE IS YOUR DOMAIN it is now turning its attention for the first time to trans-media art.

Giving the title to the show is the two-part video installation My Stage is Your Domain, specially developed for the MAK: within minimal narrative structures Truttmann portrays artist friends of hers in cryptic quotes, constructs subtly composed image spaces and stages (my stage), which are occupied and infused with life by the protagonists through their actions and characteristics (your domain). Oscillating between staged photography and moving sequences, the artist, in surreal, poetic imagery, pursues the trail of foreign images, self-images and projections. The artists acting in the video installation—all women—worked on performances for the exhibition to be presented on the evening of the opening: Verena Dürr will show Ellipse and Nina Frgic Mother Beast and her Savage Daughters.

Curator Marlies Wirth