SUMMERACADEMY.AT | Artist's talks

Language: English
Location: Residenzplatz 10, 5020 Salzburg

Lukas Pusch talks about his landscape painting, which Paula Böttcher categorises as political art: With Flora Sibirica, Lukas Pusch places himself in the pictorial tradition of politically persecuted avant-garde and modern art – as for instance Gustave Courbet’s still life with fruit, painted in prison, or Isaac Levitan’s painting Vladimirka. The motifs of such works, though superficially harmless, possess enormous political and social explosive power. At the same time, like the landscapes painted by Gerhard Richter at the height of the ’68 movement, they are a statement for art and against its political instrumentalisation and overcharging. Paula Böttcher, Flora Sibirica, in: der Antist, no. 2, spring 2016.

In spring 2017, Lukas Pusch is taking part in a botanical expedition on the Siberian peninsula of Kamchatka (RU).
http://antist.org/flora-sibirica
Lukas Pusch, born in Vienna in 1970, studied painting at the Vienna University of Applied Arts, the Surikov Institute in Moscow and the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts. Although his works are frequently seen as provocative, his primary concern is image-finding and artistic autonomy. His working method may be described as a combination of research and psychoanalytical free association. His most spectacular works, recognised worldwide, include the founding of Siberia’s first centre for contemporary art (2008) and of Slum TV (2006) a local broadcasting station in Mathare, Nairobi – one of the largest slums in the whole of Africa. The Christmas edition of the daily newspaper Die Presse (2010), illustrated with Pusch woodcuts, received the European Press Award twice in succession.

Solo exhibitions
2015 Deutsche Moscheen, CAT, Cologne (DE). Shanghai Boogie Woogie, Halle, MQ, Vienna. Soumission, weltecho. Galerie, Chemnitz (DE). 2014 Arbeiten eines Jungvaters, Lust Gallery, Vienna. 1. Wiener Luftausstellung, public space, Vienna. 2013 Kunstdiskurs mit einer sibirischen Kuh, Neuer Pfaffenhofener Kunstverein (DE). 2012 Siberian White Cube goes Art Cologne, main entrance, ART Cologne. 2011 Die Presse Künstlermappe, Albertina, Vienna. Neues Tahiti, Galerie Ernst Hilger, Vienna.

Group exhibitions
2014 In Search of the Horizon, Institute for Contemporary Art, Riga. 2011 Gute Aussichten, special project at the 4th Moscow Biennial, Haus am Ufer, Moscow. 2010 Lebt und arbeitet in Wien III, Kunsthalle, Vienna. 2009 Ferne – 8th Krasnoyarsk Museum Biennale, Museum Centre and public space, Krasnoyarsk (RU).

Publications
Lukas Pusch & TOMAK (eds.), der Antist, self-published, Vienna 2015 and 2016.
Deutsche Moscheen, exh. cat. CAT Cologne, 2015.
Hurra! 1914–1918, Zucker Art Books, New York 2014.
Kunstdiskurs mit einer sibirischen Kuh, exh. cat. Kunstverein Pfaffenhofen, 2013.
ZIL-130, Sensationsverlag, Waldhausen 2013.
- Web: www.lukaspusch.net

Artist's talks

Lukas Pusch