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Eva Gentner
BETON
STRABAG Kunstforum is pleased to invite you to the exhibition BETON by EVA GENTNER.
OPENING
Monday, 3.3.2025, 6.30–9 p.m.
WELCOME
6.30 p.m.
Jörg Rösler, Bord Member STRABAG SE
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Johan Holten
Director Kunsthalle Mannheim, Jury Member STRABAG Artaward International
Cement is an inconspicuous material with great significance. As early as 3000 BC, the ancient Egyptians were able to create a substance very similar to today's cement, using it to bind stones together in a stable manner. One could argue that the history of human construction would have unfolded quite differently without these special properties. Especially modernity, with its unprecedented expansion of human presence on Earth, would have been unthinkable without cement, and later concrete.
The artist Eva Gentner has been using cement as a material for ten years. In 2015, she sought ways to combine painting and sculpture, which eventually led to large "painterly material panels," where crumbling gray cement was applied on canvas. Over time, she became increasingly interested in the transience of the decaying surfaces, which led her to detach the canvas from the stretcher frame and create a series of wearable kimonos from the originally static canvases. These, in turn, were worn during performances, both in gallery spaces and in public.
However, the artist's fascination with the material has changed over the past decade. Could the aesthetic gray-in-gray shades now be seen as fatal monuments of our construction-obsessed and resource-draining present? For her current exhibition BETON, Eva Gentner is using a novel CO2-neutral cement alternative for the first time, derived from Carinthian stone dust. With this, she transforms the symbol of a warning into a glimmer of hope and seems to ask us all why we haven't already adapted our lifestyle in many other areas to the latest resource-saving scientific knowledge. For the artist, it is a learning process to understand how the material behaves on the canvas—when it forms dark or light areas, how it flows, and where it dries. By looking over her shoulder, we can learn and reflect on our own responsibility.
Johan Holten
ON VIEW
4.3.–3.4.2025
Due to internal events, the exhibition will not be open to the public from 5.3.-10.3.!
REGISTRATION
kunstforum@strabag.com
+43 1 224 22 2107
STRABAG Art Site at Gironcoli-Kristall
Donau-City-Straße 9, 1220 Vienna
strabag-kunstforum.at
