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We're happy to announce Anthony Lister as the next artist doing a monthlong residence in Viennese MuseumsQuartier as well as a solo show at Jan Arnold Gallery. Australian born artist Anthony Lister helped pioneer the stencil and street art movement in Australia before moving to New York in 2003. In addition to a strong background in street art he employs a sophisticated, fine art, painterly style. High and lowbrow culture clash in the content of his paintings, drawings and installations – boorish superheroes, flirtatious ballet dancers, bad-tempered old masters and imperious vamps raucously co-exist in his imagery. His contradictory, often carnivalesque, layered action paintings have hung on the walls of solo exhibitions at galleries in Sydney, Miami, New York, London, Los Angeles and Hong Kong.

Artist Statement:
The duality of man comes as both a blessing and a curse. To know ones demons is to know ones self. People don’t change they just get better at being themselves. All of my idols have been addicts. True beauty comes out of those that are true to themselves. I don’t look in the mirror because I prefer to focus on who I am rather than what I am. Being a painter is both a blessing and a curse. As I paint I realise that the many problems in painting often look similar to the solution. Recognising it is hardest part. – Anthony Lister

On the occasion of the European Championship 2016 in France, Joseph Rudolf discusses in his current exhibition the global brand football, which is able to activate passive athletes and does not even stop at the art scene.
The fascination which emanates from football is the origin of the artistic discussion about the ball sport No.1. Like millions of other people Joseph Rudolf looks football matches, settles back and enjoys the apparent switching off from everyday life. The marketing machinery of football uses this potential skillfully and instrumentalizes areas of society extensively and that with an intensity like hardly no other advertising media. Rudolf reduces the exhibition to the otherwise casually appearing jersey advertising and faces the audience with the the economic system of football. Who kicks the ball?

Contact: joseph@janarnoldgallery.com

photos: Paul Wimmer

The fading markings of an abandoned school sports field are the starting point for Sira-Zoé Schmid's new series Markers. In photographs, text works and sculptural objects the Austrian artist examines the functions and mechanisms of social rules and their manifestations. Own photographs, theoretical literature and research as well as world politics serve her as a basis for her artistic analysis. Through the process of deconstruction and by transferring from one medium to another and from two- into three-dimensionality, Schmid develops a very reduced, almost abstract visual language. The question of limits, norms and structures in everyday life is broken down into formal, geometrical shapes, opening up a space for varied references.

Curated by Sophie Haslinger

During his month-long residency in Vienna the controversial painter and street artist Ben Frost showcases a unique body of work, critiquing our media-obsessed society and the loss of innocence through advertising. Ben’s work subverts logos, icons and characters from popular culture and re-presents them in startling and often confronting new ways. The exhibition features paintings on site specific found objects such as pharmaceutical boxes, candy and cereal packaging. Staring to do so in 2011 the artist confronts the conjoined twins of capitalism and consumerism with striking compositions of Pop-Art aesthetics, playful characters of childhood cartoons, sex and violence. By remixing mainstream iconography, he creates a visual framework that is bold, confronting and often provocative. “Spoon Full of Sugar“ aims to re-evaluate our understanding of product advertising by juxtaposing unlikely and confronting elements into some of our most loved and well known consumer icons.“

Curated by / Video: Artis.Love
Contact: Sebastian@janarnoldgallery.com

Objects. Element. Prints. In 'trees make forests' Anne Sophie Wass plays with dimensions. Forms and sculptures combined with photographs challenge our perception. The colorful works depict detailed elements analogous to the multi-faceted world of the present. Due to its diversity the reality is difficult to grasp. This occurrence is shown in Wass' artworks through photographs of objects, whose sizes and scales remain the unknown and by the juxtaposition of sculptures the viewers are further led astray. ,Trees make forests and humans make society.' Each component is essential for the totality, the forest or society. The assessment of individual elements is secondary, the unknown diversity an enrichment.

curated by: Joseph Rudolf
joseph@janarnoldgallery.com

From Oct. 21 to Nov. 15, Syrian artist Osama El-Siamant will set up a production facility in the Jan Arnold Gallery of Vienna’s Museum Quarter.
An agent and several refugees of his artists’ collective will work there six hours a day, seven days a week producing Euro bills with crayons. After numeration and registration these bills will be offered for sale at nominal value as a minimal donation. The whole proceeds go directly to the refugees.

In a painfully subversive way Osama refers to the dilemma of labor bans on the one hand, and the economy of exploitation paradoxically longed for by the refugees. The production of counterfeit money by people who, after the expulsion from their home countries and the hardships of flight, must now start from scratch in the receiving countries, thus becomes a scary metaphor.