Rene Matić and Oscar Murillo: JAZZ.

Kunsthalle Wien presents Rene Matić (b.1997, Peterborough, UK) and Oscar Murillo (b. 1986, La Paila, Colombia) together for the first time.

For JAZZ. both artists present existing works as well as new commissions made specifically in response to the space and the city of Vienna. Encompassing painterly gestures, installation, film, photography, and sound, each element on show is in dialogue, shaped by Murillo’s black canvas installation which is suspended from the ceiling throughout the space.

Together, through dissection and reconciliation, both artists explore the impossibilities and contra­dictions that arise from notions of desire, visibility and opacity.

While in some ways the practices of Matić and Murillo seem rather complementary to one another, they also overlap in important aspects. For instance, the gestural painting, reminiscent of action painting, that is so often at the heart of Murillo’s work is akin to the use of dance and dancing in Matić’s videos, as they both share a spontaneous, unboth­ered and unscripted nature.

At Kunsthalle Wien, Oscar Murillo’s large-scale black canvases—a recurring element—fully develop their impressive architectural dimension. Suspended from the ceiling to create an almost labyrinthine structure, they carefully shape the space, allowing for intimate encounters with the works. While their intense darkness may elicit a sense of danger or perhaps mourning, this darkness can also be a space that breeds new life and rebirth.

Within this maze, we encounter further works by Murillo, such as a completely new set of landscape paintings titled fields of spirits (2013–2024).

Frequencies, one of Murillo’s collaborative projects, initiated in 2013, involves visiting schools around the world, fixing canvas onto pupils’ desks, letting them freely draw, graffiti, and mark them, until the artist collects them. In the Kunsthalle Wien exhibition, excerpts from this collection are installed as a large-scale wallpaper. The prints magnify the unconscious and conscious marks to striking proportions, as well as provide the basis for the Telegram (2013–2023) series.

Circling Murillo’s structure but also deeply embedded in it, we find Rene Matić’s contributions to the exhibition: four new commissions—two films, a photography series, and a sound piece—as well as an existing wall installation.

Matić’s starting point for their contribution to the JAZZ. exhibition is Vienna’s response to and “outrage” at Josephine Baker’s performance in the city in 1928. The outrage Baker sparked in Vienna was so strong that the Church felt compelled to intervene, with many sermons warning of her seductive performances. It is against this incident that Matić develops the film works redacted and climax, the photo series (out of) place, and the sound work voice (all 2024).

In redacted, we see the artist dancing in a black space with a single fixed spotlight. As they dance, their body moves in and out of the darkness, in and out of the spotlight, and therefore also in and out of our gaze. Matić draws on darkness as a means of occlusion and a strategy of removal that can signify both refusal and protection – a notion of essential value to bodies that are already by default exposed in their cultural and societal context.

The filmic text work climax puts original quotations from Baker into direct dialogue with the Viennese reviews. This dialogue could be understood as a conversation, an argument, or maybe even lovemaking—or, as the artist says, a “hate-fuck”.

In voice, the sound of church bells rings out within the gallery space from time to time—only in this case they do not signal a warning about but rather call for prayer for Baker, giving voice back to the dancer. The bell also acts as an interruption in the space, to remind the audience of their participation in the act of looking, and the histories and politics surrounding that act.

Curators: What, How & for Whom / WHW (Ivet Ćurlin, Nataša Ilić and Sabina Sabolović) and Laura Amann
Curatorial support: Ezra Šimek
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Press contact: Katharina Baumgartner, presse@kunsthallewien.at