AIL Ping-Pong #2

In its second edition, AIL Ping-Pong circles around the term and meaning of “sample.”

Presented in the small vitrine of the Otto Wagner Postsparkasse, seven graduates of the University of Applied Arts Vienna open a window into the diverse artistic practices and languages of Angewandte alumni, offering a range of perspectives that explore parallels, contrasts, or extensions within the given thematic framework.

While in the natural sciences, samples are collected to enable analysis and investigation, in music, the term “sample” refers to an excerpt from an existing recording that is integrated into a new composition. Similarly, in the visual arts, samples may emerge throughout the creative process – whether through experimental methods, the appropriation of external content, or the incorporation of elements from other disciplines, methodologies, or conceptual frameworks. Ideas, materials, methods, or visuals can be sampled. A sample can thus represent transdisciplinary collaboration or reflect a dynamic, exploratory process marked by iteration, testing, and discovery.

Hubert Blanz

graduated in 1999 from the Department of Sculpture (Bildhauerei). His artistic work deals primarily with urban infrastructures, spatial grids, and geographical and virtual networks. Within this context, megacities have emerged as a central theme: the rapid and constant development, the challenges and visions that accompany them, and the influence of these changes on our coexistence. In addition to elements of the big city, networks from nature also serve as templates for large-format collages and animations.

Margareta Klose

explores topics of coexistence within a queer-feminist, poetic practice. Her artistic work and research are situated at the intersection of fine arts, literature, education, knowledge production, and memory – centered around painting, writing, computational photography, and objets trouvés. In her work, she develops site-specific installations and performances that resemble cabinets of curiosities, scientific experimental settings, and artists’ studios – or rather: alchemists’ kitchens. At the University of Applied Arts Vienna, she studied in the Department of TransArts and graduated in 2020.

Marlene Lahmer’s

work is material-based and takes the form of sculptures, multimedia installations, and text performances. Literary and theory-informed approaches overlap translucently, incongruently, and at times complementarily. One of her main focuses lies in the aesthetic and physical qualities of glass, in the visual and auditory spaces found for texts, and in exploring concepts from cultural theory and linguistics. Lahmer graduated in 2022 from the TransArts department.

Rafael Lippuner

is an artist and exhibition designer who employs the processes of assembling materials, installing, and managing as artistic practices. The means of presentation are linked to the role of objects in terms of interaction and storytelling – especially in a time when images and symbols displace language. His multimedia works sample and intervene in everyday situations, structures, and codes to retain a certain wilderness in how we perceive our surroundings. In 2019, Lippuner graduated from the Department of Art & Science.

Mona Rith

is a textile artist, who weaves abstract objects and explores the possibilities between fixed structures and the limits of their dissolution. She plays with tension, shrinkage, and other material behaviors through weaving techniques combined with the inherent properties of the materials used. With great curiosity, Rith observes and investigates dependencies, interactions, and connections. She is an alumna of the Institute of Studies in Art and Art Education and graduated in 2021.

Laura Stoll

works in the fields of sculpture, installation, and performance. After earning a degree in medicine in Berlin, she graduated from the University of Applied Arts Vienna in the Department of Art & Science in 2021. In her projects, she operates at the intersection of medicine, psychology, and philosophy, applying individual methodologies from these fields to her artistic practice. Using a variety of formats, she investigates questions of personal identity and what constitutes our sense of being.

Martin Veigl

is a painter, interested in the smallest gestures and daily situations that convey social and historical codes and messages. Each found configuration can be seen as an unconscious, natural, and authentic fragment of reality. His paintings often do not fill the entire canvas, are fragmentary in nature, and suggest moments of memory. Veigl graduated from the Department of Painting in 2016.