Oliver Laric examines form in the digital age. Questions about authorship, original and copy, or temporal fixations such as beginning and end give way to a permanent flow of generated images. Both his thinking and artistic practice are motivated by the dissolution of boundaries and categories. In this sense, Oliver Laric is not only consequently reacting to the visual culture of our present, in which potentially everyone is involved in continuous image production, but also criticizing the seductive as well as simplistic (and therefore distorted) categorization into rigid structures. Thus, in his latest video Betweenness (2018), he depicts human and non-human animal forms sliding into each other in an animation. No single holding point or final form can be defined within their constant state of becoming. The wall works that Oliver Laric has produced especially for the exhibition at the Villa Salve Hospes are thematically linked to this: although the forms are captured in the image as a single motif, they oscillate between two- and three-dimensionality, between digital photography and painting.

After studying at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, Oliver Laric (born 1981 in Innsbruck, AT) had solo exhibitions at the Schinkelpavillon, Berlin; the Kunsthalle Winterthur (both 2017); the Secession, Vienna (2016); and the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington (2014). Oliver Laric recently exhibited his work in group exhibitions at the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2018); the Centre Pompidou, Paris (2017); the Whitechapel Gallery, London (2016); and the New Museum, New York (2015).

GUEST ROOM: LUCY BEECH

As a comment or contrast to the main exhibition, artists and curators are invited to come and make use of what was originally the guest room at the Villa Salve Hospes. Invited by Oliver Laric, Lucy Beech (born 1985 in Hull, UK) exhibits her video work Pharmakon (2016). In partly choreographed configurations and conversations she explores the interplay between self-representation and healing in the group dynamics of therapy sessions.

Curators: Jule Hillgärtner, Nele Kaczmarek

The exhibition Jahr des Hundes has been made possible by:
Niedersächsisches Ministerium für Wissenschaft und Kultur
Stiftung Niedersachsen
Veolia

The Kunstverein Braunschweig is supported by:
Stadt Braunschweig

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