Aurianne Chevandier: Nur zur äußerlichen Anwendung Event

curated by Contemporary Matters

Opening: 17. 03. 2023, 18:00
Closing: 05. 05. 2023, 16:00

What happens, when a planned city is confronted with the use of its residents? What ephemeral traces do they leave behind? Is photography a productive medium for the preservation of these traces?

The French-born artist Aurianne Chevandier introduces with Nur zur äußerlichen Anwendung her first solo-exhibition in Austria. Through an intensive process, the artist has dealt with the urban spatial environment of the Contemporary Matters Studio — the public space of Seestadt. Educated as both a photographer and historian, Aurianne Chevandier researched the still young historicity of the site.

Intentional and undeliberate everyday gestures have a real-material, yet temporally-precarious presence. Through photographs of seemingly banal objects captured on light-sensitive film and within a confining frame, Aurianne Chevandier attempts to reconstruct and narrate the genealogy of ephemeral movements. The artist captures these traces with another imprint - that of the photographic apparatus. Through this double gesture, the camera’s conditions of possibility and production, as its relationship to temporality and light are juxtaposed with the structures within which history-writing and archival procedures are made possible. Aside from the common denominator of time shared by these two domains, limitations, imprints, and fragmentation reveal themselves as also inherent to both history-writing and photography. In this context, the artist explores the in-between spaces of Seestadt as a starting point for her historical reflection and attempts to establish a dialogue between an individual historiography of everydayness and the photographic medium.

The exhibition will take place between the 17th of March until the 5th of May 2023 and will be accompanied by a supporting program.

Program:
01. 04. 2023, 15 – 16:30
Photo-walk with Sekretariat für Geister, Archivpolitiken und Lücken (SKGAL) (Nina Hoechtl/Julia Wieger)
20.04.2023, 18 – 20:30
Aurianne Chevandier in conversation with Cornelia Dlabaja (University of Vienna)