a solo show by Mani Froh
Vernissage: October 16th. 19.00 - 22.00
Exhibition Duration: October 17th - November 2nd
Finissage: November 2nd 18.00 - 21.00
Opening times: Wed - Fri 15.00 - 19.00
about this exhibition:
This is an interactive social happening. 10,828* photos are stacked into a tower. At first, the expected exhibition of photographs is withheld from the viewer. During the opening evening, the artist lets the tower fall so that the images flood the gallery room with thousands of impressions. The flood of images represents the 2019 lifestyle, an overload of visuals from daily life, which is seen everyday on social media.
So what do we do with it? Take the photographs and find a suitable place in the gallery. Hang the photographs.
about the works:
Social media, in particular Facebook, has been the place where Maniโs private photography has interacted with the young Viennese art and music scene. In the course of the last five years, these interactions have developed a life of their own: people who only knew each other from the images have gotten to know each other in the real world, projects have been realized, relationships have developed and real life experiences merged with interpretations of the photographs online. This creative period came to an end because of changing social media algorithms and ends in an attempt at translating the digital into the physical. The main concept of this exhibition is the refusal to reduce five years of photographing everyday life into a small selection of images. Instead, the digitally published photographs, which already formed a community online, is translated into real life through printing a vast amount of over 10.000 images. Furthermore, the viewers are integrated into the process of curating the images to reflect and counteract the digital algorithms which take this process out of the personโs hand. The exhibited pictures are about the people who Mani Froh encountered in the past five years and the relationships they have formed. Improper Walls was chosen as the exhibition venue due to its location and social platform, which played a big part in this. The community around Improper Walls and Mani Froh overlaps. And not only do they overlap in the digital images, but also in the digital interactions of people who know each other through Improper Walls, Mani Froh, or through recognizing each other in the photographs online. During the evening, those social interactions (or yet-to-come interactions) will be transformed into a real life experience. The theoretical questions that were asked by the artist while creating this project find their practical counterpart during the project: The presentation, context and impact of images; translations between the digital space and real life space; assumptions based on images seen online; questions about subjectivity, objectivity and the meaning people assign to images; how real is photography; what do images mean; how authentic are photographs and what do these terms refer to; how does the meaning of images change in different contexts; which narratives emerge; etc.
about mani froh
*in Vienna Mani wanted to understand the world and people, so he studied biology and found showing the world and people to be more interesting. Now he creates photos and videos, mostly in Vienna. This time: glimpses of life from the last years that hopefully add up to something bigger, something more relevant. Carefully selected and arranged with love. ๐ญ
*Special thanks to the photolab Cyberlab and its team, that made it possible to print 10,828 photographs and supported Mani Froh and Improper Walls throughout the process.
Documentation of the opening night:
Photography by: Zoe Opratko
Video by: Markus Tozzer
