Sarah Pichlkostner

Lustwarande | Sarah Pichlkostner K: “So darlin’, darlin’ stand by me, I just wanna stay in bed today” (2018) Sarah Pichlkostner (Salzburg, 1988, lives and works in Vienna and London) makes installations, which she describes herself as settings, because this word – coming from the film and theatre world – refers to the personal atmosphere, the experience. The artist finds it import to give the viewer the chance to visit these settings with their own personal stories. The settings consist of a variety of objects and installations, which were brought together during Pichlkostner’s research on the character of her materials, how they react in a specific space and how they are sensory, perceived. For Pichlkostner objects are more than form and dimensions, she considers them as characters, which she invariably indicates as KAY and KUY. KAY stands for ratio and logic, where KUY embodies emotions. For Pichlkostner a work starts with a thorough exploration of a space and location, followed by a choice of material that fits best to it’s surroundings. She mostly uses ready-mades, which she dissembles and reassembles. It concerns do-it-yourself products such as windows, lamps, fabric, tubes and sandbags which she finds at a affordable construction market or ones that have been used before. According to Pichlkostner previously used objects embody the stories of an earlier life. For HYBRIDS Pichlkostner chose the French pond in ‘De Oude Warande’, which is 30 by 60 meters wide. The choice for the pond is based on the fact that water is the first reflective material ever available to humans. This also explains Pichlkostner’s love for reflective aluminium,used to make mirrors, which can be interpreted as the symbol for human self-reflection. Invisible underwater tanks carry thin, horizontal and vertical, hardly visible pipes and squared shaped aluminium structures that come out of the water. The artist specifically focused on the - strongly divergent from the white cube – conditions of the outdoor space, with it’s lack of ceiling and walls and where the surface of the water is constantly changing. The structure of the setting creates it’s own boundaries. The constantly changing appearance of the light on the water incessantly influences the perception of all elements causing the viewer’s experience to also change constantly as if it is liquefied.