Double Trouble

Double Trouble: A Double Challenge, but Also a Double Effort

An evocative and promising title. After all, when is a title ever standalone? It is always tied to the content of a program—or, in this case, an exhibition. And so, we are ready to be surprised and moved by an event that brings together two artists and perhaps, who knows, even two different conceptions of art. But it undeniably promises a profound dialogue with each other’s work.

At the heart of Julia Frank’s contribution is a video portrait of Karin Welponer. In just ten minutes, the video takes a narrative journey from past to present, as Julia Frank herself explains. Similarly, Karin Welponer’s photographic compositions revolve around a focal point or core: “tree fragments” or “arboreal details,” as well as visible lesions and scars, healing marks, and growths that the artist elevates to the status of art.

Viewed through this lens, the exhibition becomes an excursion, perhaps even a journey, that plays with transformations, inversions, and allusions. For example, the iconic coat rack by the Thonet brothers is revisited and alienated by Julia Frank. Stripped of its original function and form, it is imbued with new content, including formal elements that connect to and echo the arboreal landscapes and milled woods in Karin Welponer’s works.

The forms are shaped not by human hands but by the tracks and tunnels carved by the bark beetle, an insect that infests tree bark. These marks transcend their grim connotation as harbingers of the tree’s death and are elevated into aesthetic forms, into works of art.

Double Trouble is, in fact, a soft dialogue, a desire to integrate with the work and approach of one’s counterpart. Trouble, after all, also means “concern.” Double, indeed. This exhibition can also be read as a sensitive and delicate way of engaging with and being present with one another.

Photos: Leonhard Angerer, Jürgen Eheim