S1E5: traces of no body

Anzhelika Palyvoda, Marlene Lahmer

10.04. – 21.04.2024, 21.04., 19:00, Performance to (un)burn

Anzhelika Palyvoda and Marlene Lahmer both engage with the agency of material, be it the adhesive embrace of glue on canvas or the ethereal qualities of glass. Through this approach, the uncontrollable nature of materiality becomes a metaphor for the unpredictable reality that surrounds us. A shared emphasis on the human presence emerges as a common thread. The reciprocal influence of image, material and trace in their pieces captures and reflects not just visual memories, but the tactile and haptic surfaces that resonate with body memory. Anzhelika Palyvoda studies Painting, Marlene Lahmer finished her studies at the Angewandte in 2023.

Anzhelika Palyvoda emphasizes people’s experience, creating images that render them real to others. She uses photography to create tangible proofs of past encounters. She transforms her archive into painting and applies distorting lenses of glue to the surface. Just as memory selectively shades moments from the past, the glue lenses foreground some details and veil others. The paintings at the same time embody a situation and create distance to it. This raises questions about the elusive nature of truth and memory.

While it is certain that some body or agent must have left its bite marks on the blown glass pieces, this genesis can only be fictional as the hot glass would have severely injured the intervening body upon contact. Marlene Lahmer’s work thus presents a utopian encounter between body and glass that reflects and subverts the temperature conditions of the world. The sculptures indicate a scenario of mutual transformation.