Clemens Tschurtschenthaler
SIAMO NOI
17.01. - 20.03.2025
SIAMO NOI
17.01. - 20.03.2025
Livia Klein
Clemens Tschurtschenthaler
siamo noi
The exhibition siamo noi by Clemens Tschurtschenthaler at SINK Vienna delves into the interplay of individual identity and collective dynamics through a sculptural installation that engages with the physical and psychological spaces between autonomy and belonging.
Positioned at the center of the „space,“ the piece evokes the architecture of a stadium, with seating reminiscent of sports benches commonly found in school gyms or sports fields. With this work, the artist revisits questions of group dynamics, examining how collective structures can obscure individual identity. He poses subtle inquiries into the mechanisms of group behavior: What forces shape their trajectory? Where does accountability lie within the collective? Using the context of sporting events—where heightened emotion and aggression often occur—Tschurtschenthaler explores how specific environments might evoke deeply ingrained, almost primordial patterns of human behavior, reflecting on the tension between individual agency and collective instinct.
The installation, characterized by child-like dimensions and titled siamo noi – „It is us“ –explores the dynamics of fanaticism and tribalism that can emerge within groups. This slogan siamo noi is found in both football culture and familial or social contexts, highlighting the tension between collective and individual self-perception. siamo noi engages with the concept of the „tribe“ or the „next of kin“. The latter designates a hierarchical unit that plays a pivotal role in inheritance law. These terms refer to a separation from the „Other“ but also resonate with our contemporary understanding of identity and belonging. The artistic process here is primarily intuitive, emphasizing collective experience and instinctual bonds through the use of both ready-made objects and deliberately constructed structures to craft speculative narratives and realities. In this way, Tschurtschenthaler elevates the archaic need for community and identification to a contemporary, deeply human level.
Alongside the subtly suggested bench, the sculpture also features a number of drumsticks, creating an association with rhythm and sound. One can almost hear the fans marching and chanting in unison. In this way, the static object is transformed into a temporal entity, becoming a fragment of a performance for the viewer. With the use of this silhouette, Tschurtschenthaler evokes a situation, an event, or a moment in which we all find ourselves, each carrying our own ideas, thoughts, and associations. Thus, the viewer is propelled into a present that resonates with their own past experiences.
As with many of Tschurtenthaler’s works, siamo noi also cultivates a rhythmic interplay of presence and absence, inviting viewers into a conceptual loop traversing internal, archetypal psychological states and outwardly constructed representations of the self. The exhibition at SINK provokes a reexamination of the relationships between materiality, temporality, and identity by destabilizing binaries and reframing objects as mediators of memory and speculation. In doing so, siamo noi transforms the exhibition space into a site of introspection and collective resonance, where the boundaries between the tangible and the intangible dissolve, allowing new narratives of belonging and selfhood to emerge.
Clemens Tschurtschenthaler’s (*1988) multifaceted practice operates at the intersection of installation, sculpture, kinetic objects, sound composition, and video, within which a manifestation of a nuanced activation of spatial dynamics takes place. Through his works, the artist engages in a conceptual dialogue with the psychological, transcending mere form to narrative sculptures that embody and translate profound inner states into tangible materiality. Interrogating the rituals, tensions, and interrelations that shape social, societal, and personal realities, Tschurtschenthaler creates installations that evoke speculative moments and spaces, functioning as allegorical frameworks through which the absence of the human body paradoxically underscores the universality of human experience.
Central to Tschurtenthaler’s artistic approach is the exploration of liminality—the thresholds where the individual and the group converge, nature and artifice blur, and the self oscillates between autonomy and contextual interdependence. His pieces reference urban infrastructures and cultural systems, incorporating elements of everyday objects in relation to deeply embedded primal intuitions and behavior. The synergy of industrial and organic materials in his works underscores an embedded temporality within their static structures, as themes of movement, erosion, and residual traces imbue his forms with an immaterial vitality. This presence, while elusive, destabilizes fixed interpretations, engendering a space where sculptural objects evolve from inert entities into dynamic and affective agents.
Photos: Thomas Steineder