CÉLINE STRUGER
“We are using up the earth.
It is almost gone.”
-Margaret Atwood
#ECOLOGY #INSTALLATION #SCULPTURE
BIO.
Céline Struger is an Austrian artist working in sculpture and site-specific art. Her focus lies on
the redetermination of sites and their original genius loci, dealing with issues like postcapitalism, ecology and mythology. Struger often uses water as a sculptural medium and
integrates found-, as well as hand-crafted objects into her sculptures and large-scale
installations. The artist recently exhibited at gallery She BAM! Leipzig (solo) and Synagogue -
Centre for Contemporary Art, Trnava (group show). In 2022 and 2021 she showed at MQ Art
Box in Museumsquartier Vienna and Loggia Vienna (solo) and TEA Tenerife Espacio de las
ArtArtesArtes (group show). Céline Struger is based in Vienna.
Social Relief / GEOSPIRIT (2022)
Steel, water, stone cast, ceramics
My latest in situ work consisted of two equally large, kidney-shaped water basins rest on the floor, each with 2.30m high gargoyles attached. The mannerist-symbolist gargoyles eloquently combine familiar cultural-historical motifs with contemporary industrial forms. The gargoyles are crowned by ominous heads: a gargoyle with a Janus head as a tricorn opens up three visual axes to the room. One face is still, one screams, the third sticks its tongue out. The earth spirits want to draw attention, to show the limits to the appropriation of nature and its resources, which has been increasing since industrialisation. In the contradictory use of graceful ancient symbols and arte povera, I point out the unwelcome connection between high culture and decay and hints at premonitions of the end times.
Photos: © Gerhard Maurer
GOODBYE HORSES RECONSTRUCTION (2021-202*)
Blu, Analogue C-Print from slide, 190 x 150 cm; Siam & Ray, Analogue C-Prints from slide, 20 x 25 cm
The group of sculptures titled “Goodbye Horses RECONSTRUCTION” was presented as an intervention in public space on a staged building site. It simulates a paleontological excavation and served, among other things, as a stage set for a performance by sound artist Georg Zichy and dancer Thales Weilinger. The site specific installation plays on the relationship between social models of explanation for phenomena, facts and fiction. Background: the “Lindwurm” (“dragon”) sculpture is reckoned to be the first example of “paleo-art” world-wide. It was designed by sculptor Ulrich Vogelsang in 1590 on the basis of a fossil find discovered in 1335. According to current analysis this was the skull of a primeval woolly rhinoceros. “Goodbye Horses RECONSTRUCTION” alluded to the “sensationalismfactor” of this heraldic animal and aimed to cast its spell on the various groups of visitors to the town square Neuer Platz in Klagenfurt, Carinthia.
Photos: © Céline Struger
THE CRYSTAL LAND (2021)
Steel, water, coloured touche
In May 2021 I participated in an artist-in-residence at the Lauster quarry in Krastal, Austria. Lauster is a full operative marble quarry and besides those in Carrara, Italy, the most famous one for high-end white, translucent marble in Europe. I was invited along with the Berlin based artist Eva Funk to create a land art intervention on site. Within a month we started a collaboration with alpine paleontologist on an artist book and developed new and collective art works. In an interdisciplinary process, we explored the local flora, collaborated with geologists and paleontologists and investigated scientific questions by the means of contemporary art. Grasping the sites sheer scale and outer worldly atmosphere within our documentation turned out to be quite a challenge. To take photos, Eva Funk and I had to climb up 12 meters of stony walls to get the perfect shot. At the end of the day our bodies were shaking from the heights, the wind and the coldness of the stone.