Oasis” is a subtly composed, expansive installation featuring numerous different sculptures, photographs, printed textiles, drawings, and sound elements
"Oasis" at MQ Salon, Vienna: Karina Mendreczky and Katalin Kortmann Járay reveal a surreal world
Oasis | MQ Salon
KARINA MENDRECZKY & KATALIN KORTMANN JÁRAY | Oasis, large-scale installation at MQ Salon, Vienna.
From Tuesday - Sunday and on holidays from 10-18h | Entrance is FREE
Participating Artists: Katalin Kortmann Járay and Karina Mendreczky
Oasis | Installation view | Katalin Kortmann Járay and Karina Mendreczky | Credit: Rudolf Strobl, Mátyás Gyuricza and MQ Wien
Press text:
Environmental catastrophes and bleak prognoses for the future of life on earth – the climate crisis has become part of our everyday life and is determining our life reality to an ever-greater extent.
Oasis | Installation view | Katalin Kortmann Járay and Karina Mendreczky | Credit: Rudolf Strobl, Mátyás Gyuricza and MQ Wien
Our emotional relationship to nature is thus often burdened with guilt, since we human beings are responsible for the destruction of our environment.
Oasis | Installation view | Katalin Kortmann Járay and Karina Mendreczky | Credit: Rudolf Strobl, Mátyás Gyuricza and MQ Wien
Even if there is the will to bring about a sustainable society, the political and individual scope for action nonetheless has its limits.
Oasis | Installation view | Katalin Kortmann Járay and Karina Mendreczky | Credit: Rudolf Strobl, Mátyás Gyuricza and MQ Wien
The oscillation between power and powerlessness that results from this is shaping philosophical, ethical-moral, and spiritual discourses and raises questions that occupy many individuals.
Oasis | Installation view | Katalin Kortmann Járay and Karina Mendreczky | Credit: Rudolf Strobl, Mátyás Gyuricza and MQ Wien
In their artistic work, Karina Mendreczky and Katalin Kortmann Járay take up animist motifs and conceptual worlds.
Oasis | Installation view | Katalin Kortmann Járay and Karina Mendreczky | Credit: Rudolf Strobl, Mátyás Gyuricza and MQ Wien
Animism is based on the belief that all elements in nature, both living creatures and inanimate objects have a spiritual essence.
Oasis | Installation view | Katalin Kortmann Járay and Karina Mendreczky | Credit: Rudolf Strobl, Mátyás Gyuricza and MQ Wien
While animist thought has always been a central component of many indigenous religions.
Oasis | Installation view | Katalin Kortmann Járay and Karina Mendreczky | Credit: Rudolf Strobl, Mátyás Gyuricza and MQ Wien
It is also currently being given new attention in Western societies: as a relationship to the world that emphasizes the mutual interdependency of all things, that regards the boundaries between species, between oneself and the world as fluid.
Oasis | Installation view | Katalin Kortmann Járay and Karina Mendreczky | Credit: Rudolf Strobl, Mátyás Gyuricza and MQ Wien
Since with the environmentally destructive lifestyles of the present, a relationship to the world that is based on differentiation, objectification, and hierarchization becomes questionable.
Oasis | Installation view | Katalin Kortmann Járay and Karina Mendreczky | Credit: Rudolf Strobl, Mátyás Gyuricza and MQ Wien
Oasis is a subtly composed, extensive installation of sculptures, photographs, printed textiles, and drawings that is supplemented with a sound component.
Oasis | Installation view | Katalin Kortmann Járay and Karina Mendreczky | Credit: Rudolf Strobl, Mátyás Gyuricza and MQ Wien
In it, Mendreczky (*1988 in Budapest, Hungary) and Kortmann Járay (*1986 Budapest, Hungary) take up both spiritual narratives and personal family histories and translate them into unusual pictures and objects that seem alien and familiar to us at the same time.
Oasis | Installation view | Katalin Kortmann Járay and Karina Mendreczky | Credit: Rudolf Strobl, Mátyás Gyuricza and MQ Wien
Besides set pieces from nature like shells and sand, the space is populated with hybrid creatures with human traits and plant characteristics or that represent a merging of animal and object.
Oasis | Installation view | Katalin Kortmann Járay and Karina Mendreczky | Credit: Rudolf Strobl, Mátyás Gyuricza and MQ Wien
They are free interpretations of elements and motifs from old fairy tales and myths.
There are also spiritual-religious symbols such as the pomegranate, date palms, or folded hands, as well as historical photographs from family albums in which a particular aura is inherent.
Oasis | Installation view | Katalin Kortmann Járay and Karina Mendreczky | Credit: Rudolf Strobl, Mátyás Gyuricza and MQ Wien
Female figures are positioned in various places in the space and sustain the mystical scenery.
Oasis | Installation view | Katalin Kortmann Járay and Karina Mendreczky | Credit: Rudolf Strobl, Mátyás Gyuricza and MQ Wien
As a whole, the objects form a magical-seeming, fairytale-like arrangement, a sort of surreal cabinet of curiosities that evokes the interconnectedness of all beings.