Elena Kristofor, Laura Sperl
das T/abor, Vienna, Austria
2022
I step into the exhibition space and find myself enveloped in fog. After a few minutes, my eyes adjust, and I make out four photographs and a video installation scattered lightly across the walls through the white haze. To get a closer look, I step very close to the works. One photograph shows a sharply bent elbow protruding from behind a split tree trunk in a dense, dark-green forest. It is the only clue to the person behind it. A wisp of fog envelops the trunk and breaks against it. In another photograph, I see the same tree trunk, with a hand emerging from the side. In yet another, a person is clinging to it; only one leg and two arms are visible. In the midst of the forest, a headstand pose in a state of suspension appears surreal and transports the viewer into a dream world. The upper body and arms disappear almost entirely into the fog, which nearly completely engulfs the scene. Like a transition, the fog in Exhibition Space One merges with that of the photographs, creating a sense of spatial proximity to the depicted forest landscape. In the video work, the protagonist appears in a fog-shrouded forest setting and follows her own physical impulses, apparently inspired by the fog. The initially gentle and cautious dance-like interplay between the woman and the fog escalates into a fierce and combative back-and-forth that – after the fog has thrown the woman to the ground – finally dissipates, allowing the two to find a playful, new way of being together.
Corina Lueger, excerpt from the exhibition text, published in the exhibition catalog, 2022
translated by the artists
