Reinhold Zisser
Lávka-Notgalerie

The exhibition title refers to two art projects. The first is Notgalerie, both an art centre and a work of art, which came into existence in 2015 through the appropriation of an abandoned wooden church in a suburb of Vienna. Through this act, Reinhold Zisser demonstrated his idea that in relation to institutions, an artist resembles a hermit crab slipping into an empty shell, only to leave it after some time and to move into another one.

During his residence in Brno, Zisser met the artist Martin Zet who was then completing his exhibition Sculptor Miloš Zet: Walls, Pedestals and Models in the Brno House of Arts. The exhibition included LÁVKA, a wooden bridge approximately 30 metres long running through the exhibition. When Zisser returned to Austria,, he and Zet prepared a joint project in which they transported LÁVKA to Vienna in summer 2020 and installed it next to Notgalerie, on the edge of an expanding satellite city.

LÁVKA-NOTGALERIE echoes this artistic communication. Its central points are now parts of the bridge whose half was dismantled and transferred back to Brno. It thus embodies a moment of separation as well as the connection between Vienna and Brno. To complement the project, artists from the Czech Republic and Austria are invited to develop the symbolic level of the work by means of various interventions (performances and temporary installations) on both halves of the bridge.

photo: Polina Davydenko