We are very pleased to present the exhibition Bitter Arcadia in our gallery in Vienna. The group exhibition brings together works by international artists who adopt the practice of sublimation in various ways, albeit not with the intention of repressing certain content (as with Freud).

Generations Y and Z in particular are grappling with symbolic apparatuses that seem unavoidable today. Their reflections revolve around the renewal of narrative concepts and their validation from today's perspective - a concern that is not alien to those born in the 1980s and earlier.

In the beginning was not only the word, but also the self. In an increasingly unstable and disturbed world, self-sufficiency gives young generations of artists a sense of strength and security. They make self-determined decisions about their lives and thereby defend themselves against a loss of control over the larger reality. In their artistic language - a mixture of autobiographical, symbolic and fictional elements - they attempt to create possible scenarios for present and future communities or simply speak carefully about their pressing sensitivities. The expression of concern, grief or empathy in their art, even if it may appear at first glance as “childish obsequiousness”, has a broader emotional and social meaning. What counts are not only the facts, but also the newly formulated evaluations of this compassion. New fantastic, contradictory realities emerge before our eyes in their paintings and other art practices. Gender transgressions and transcendent metamorphoses lend the autofictions shown here an additional sparkling attraction.

But is it possible to reimagine the stories for our complex reality, with a blue-blooded or ice-cold blue, a lemon yellow, with pearl tears, hearts or glittering stars, with emoji and artificial flowers or extravagant bows (to sweeten everything, like in the neo-romantic style coquette coru) that look auspicious or festive? Can you believe the tears? Artworks presented here are often cute, sometimes post-romantic or decadent, spicy and sweet, entangled not only in the traditional iconography of art history, but also in the neurographic abstract line.

However, the feelings of independence and strength can prove deceptive and in reality lead to exclusion, isolation and loss of control. Alluding to this, the exhibition pursues two strands that, following the “deconstruction of the subject”, deal with the phenomenon of mourning, worry and memory, even before someone or something dies or passes away. Mourning determines the position of a European subject that wants to preserve the memory of the other and as such mourns the other, but at the same time cannot fully internalize him or her. In this ambiguity, the subject is a mourning subject because it is part of its structure to process or mourn what has been lost. Grieving also raises the question of the attitude towards what exists outside the subject: That is, whether we can better deal with loss by internalizing it, which means “devouring” the other, or by refusing any relationship, which means letting it be forgotten.

It is precisely this paradox or the “logic of mourning” that is reflected in the writings of Jacques Derrida (e.g. The Work of Mourning), who describes this phenomenon as an irresolvable aporia from which there is no way out. But precisely because of this, it brings all considerations, all doubts and all possibilities into circulation - into the “impossible cycle of mourning” - which gives it its meaning in the first place. The “law of mourning” in contrast to Freud's “work on mourning” is therefore an infinite challenge and can also be expressed and overcome through the power and energy of an image. The image of the lost in contemporary Arcadia - and here Europe with its current losses and fears is probably also meant - represents the law of mourning. The image - according to the philosopher - establishes the law of the dead, and here of the absent, and places the person who sees the image before this law. For we not only look at the image, but the image looks at us. And that, according to Derrida, is its right. Representation here is not a reproducing re-presentation, but a restoration of the presence of what has been lost. This is precisely the strength of the works shown in this exhibition.

Text: Goschka Gawlik