2 or 3 days before, it was still a mystery to all of us. What are Véronique Faucheur and Marc Pouzol going to do with the tons of wood they ordered from a hardware store and collected themselves at the riverbank in Hallein, we wondered.

Entering the Kunstraum pro arte last friday, the mystery still remained a bit as the main room of the gallery only showed a projection of Veronique, Marc and the students of their class at the Alte Saline gathering driftwood. Upon closer inspection of the ground, one could see a boardwalk made from linked-together square timber leading past the projection and inviting spectators to follow it. Upon doing so, one was led outside, into what was the heart of the project. Here the driftwood was reencountered, laid out left and right of the footpath, the naturally shaped wood flowing by the artifically shaped one. It was like the river had returned to land.

The exhibition will be running until the 3rd of august, with the gallery being open tuesday through friday from 4 to 9 pm and from 10 am to 1 pm every Saturday. The experience might be a bit less nice without Steve Mathewson and Thorsten Mächtel there to illustrate with their music as they did on opening night, but it will nevertheless be a fascinating experience to see this interesting garden. [mp]

Last Friday, our second artist in residence this year, Johannisburg native Jay Caboz, who normally works there as a photographer, took the time to present himself and his works. Once again selected in cooperation with Camera Austria and the Market Photo workshop, a south-african organisation for photographers that amongst other things teaches classes in photojournalism, he started his presentation by explaining South Africa's history of apartheid and how this history and its memories are being more and more changed and phased out now. This is very interesting as last years photographer Thandile Zwelibanzi, coming from a similar geographic background and even having a similar interest in people and their history, seemed to be a lot more at ease with Southafricas past to the point that he didn't even deem it worthy of mention.

Jay, on the other hand, specifically searches for locations that are being rewritten, be it by renaming streets and buildings, or by finding places he knows as a cityscape he drives by to be squatted by people. It's always very important for him " to create landscape that draws the viewer in, that invites to wander into it and look for traces."

So what are his plans for Salzburg? He's here to accompany and document the academy and its proceedings, but from what angle will he approach it? He puts it thusly: "On the one hand, I see the Summeracademy as an institution with it's very own long history, and want to concentrate on the residue the artists leave behind, their conversation with the city and its buildings, but also on what makes them come back. Then, there's also my position to consider here. Am I a resident, or a tourist? This creates an interesting conflict I'll look into as well."

Judging from the work he showed that Friday afternoon, we can look forward to an interesting work that will show as a very different side of the academy and its participants. i'll be looking forward to seeing it. [mp]

When Katrin Plavcak presented herself last thursday at her lunchtalk, she chose to not simply sketch her artistic development or list recent projects, but traced the story of art serving as a kind of journalistic, work, depicting politically inconvenient truths and conditions.

Starting from the famous Gericault painting The Raft of Medusa that at the time of its creation greatly upset the public as well the ones in power, she touches upon our century with depictions of secret wars and hidden atrocities. Her we also get to see some of her own works, like a painting of Dinosaurs with heads of world leaders at the time it was painted, including former US president George W. Bush and Mahmud Ahmadinejad, sadly still iranian head of state. "They felt like dinosaurs to me, ruthlessly trampling the earth." she explains. Another painting she shows features a prominent chinese dissident behind a grid of red bars, an image that speaks for itself without putting a name to it. This painting was even featured in an exhibition during the time she spent in China. It remained untitled as to not attract to much of the wrong attention like the gallery owner feared it would and in the end Katrin left it in care of the gallery owner so lots more people could see it.

Asked what an image needs have to be a paintable subject, she says she's not sure herself. "I have a whole archive of images I select what interest me from." she explains, to go on: "I want it to portray something that would otherwise be too easily forgotten." It's in this vein of working that she also states she wouldn't want to paint Anders Breivik. This statement shows how Katrin Plavcak doesn't jump on some bandwagon of using political content to garner fame and fortune, but out of genuine concern and interest for topics she believes need to be reported and kept in the public mind.

But she's not only a painter, but also a singer, as she demonstrates by showing a video titled Orgon Rockthat features, in her words, "a frustrated female architect and speaking meteors traveling through space." Here another of her big interests crops up, space and our journey there. She shows a series of paintings featuring aliens barring the way to space for humans, maybe in a desperate attempt to save space from our stupidity. The age of crewed spaceflights is coming to an end now, it seems, so there's one less thing to worry about for Katrin. As there remain lots, though, we will without doubt see a lot more interesting paintings and videos from this artist.

For now, we can look forward to the presentation of works by her class this upcoming Friday at the open day at the Fortess Hohensalzburg that will be running from 2 to 6 pm. [mp]

http://plavcak.com

The second installment of our discussion round On attitudes to form and so on, once again moderated by former gellery owners Patricia Köstring and Stephan Maier, featured art crtic Hans-Joachim Müller and the question how art criticism worked then, and how it does now.

It was quickly assessed that in fact it doesn't really play a role any more, on the one hand because there's no space in the papers any more for a profound critique and the people discussing art don't have the kowledge any more to really give a detailed criticism, and on the other hand because the sucess of artists that are endorsed by the international art community doesn't stand or fall with anybodies opinion any more. Actually, there isn't even any discussion any more if something is art or not. "There's no more big fights over art any more. I find it boring to savage works of art but it's euqally bring that all discussion has disappeared."

"Today, the art world works like this: There's three circles." he goes on to explain. "First, the so-called display art where an artist like Meese works in, making  spectacle out of himself over a period of time, giving the audience the crazy artist that steps outside of societies boundaries and makes art accessible for them." Sharper tongues could say he's bleeing the meaning out of art, but we'll give him the benefit of the doubt here. The second circle consists of artists that follow their artistic calling for decades, unperterturbed by hypes coming and going, that also branch out into teaching and making art in public space. And then there's the third circle that is made up of local artists, undiscovered by a broad public, that produce great works in their often remote areas. Some of them might toy with the idea of moving to a bigger city to gain limelight, but then decide against because they work and live well exactly where they are.

Hans-Joachim Müller would have also been an interesting guest for our global art forum, as he says global art only works in the first circle, the artists putting themselves on display, but is utter nonsense in the other two.

He's not a friend of "making it" through scandal, either. "It's interesting to see how artists intentionally provoke scandals to get their careers off the ground but I find it tedious to write about them." He goes on to state that now that art critique has become obsolete, he finds it most interesting to go to remote areas and discover the fantastic artists there. Maybe we should follow his lead and find some hidden treasures instead of fawning over the same 10 people as the rest of our big, diverse planet that seems to have shrunk so much over the last decades. [mp]

After presenting herself by herself at last years lunchtalk at the Fortress, why not do it differently this year? Christina Zurfluh might have thought and invited Sibylle Omlin, an art expert, curator and lecturer that first encountered her work in the late 90ies to have a conversation about her works and artistic development.

Starting from the early works that consist of up to 50 and more layers of acrylic paint, all of them meticulously documented in what she calls her diaries, soon to be published as an artist book, that in turn are worked on with sand paper and even a hammer to once again reveal the layers underneath, to her more recent works that feature plastic planes stretched out in space, wrinkled in areas so the paint that is applied with a stick can run and form patterns.

These works she calls Strombilder, a wordplay that can be best translated as current images, leaving it up to the viewer if it's that of a stream or electricity. The artist started working in this direction because she noticed how acrylic paint would dry in lines and shapes on the plastic foil she uses to cover the walls of her studio out of the pure necessity of needing a pristine environment to begin new works. "Acrylic paint is a great material, there are so many ways to use it. You can make things like my older works that have an almost sculptural character, also whole curtains of nothing but paint on foil as it dries and sticks together well, but you can also cast it into shapes and use it like rubber." she explains her fondness for a material that had its high times in the 80ies but is now seldom seen in use by contemporary artists.

Before ending the talk, all delivered in absolutely adorable swiss german, the two women briefly touch upon her most recent works, Sybille telling how one day she came into Christina's studio and noticed a painting that looked like it actually had some elements drawn by hand on it, but hesitated to ask as in all the time she has known the artist the paintbrush was a tool she stayed away from as far as possible. "I never forbade myself the usage of anything," says Christina here, "but I like exploring different paths and seeing what I can do with one technique."

I  will be looking forward to seeing the troves she without doubt will find as she continues her artistic journey. [mp]