Exhibition
March 24 – May 26, 2023
Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation
6., Mariahilfer Straße 1B/1
Curated by Anna Fliri
What if there were a place where all kinds of books were collected? What if everything were written in those books? Everything that has ever been written in the past and will be written in the future? Could such a fantastic space really exist? What would it look like? Based on the vision of the Total Library by the writer Jorge Luis Borges, Florian Unterberger has been exploring the principle of infinity since 2011. In the work complex of the same name, the artist and book collector created a code to visualize words spatially. In the process, he allocates a geometrical form to each letter of the alphabet, and in combination with color, it builds the base for his Total Alphabet. Unterberger precisely draws secret linguistic bodies, which are modeled layer by layer to form words. Formations emerge that seem to rise three-dimensionally from the paper and expand into uncertain landscapes – continuously Unterberger proceeds his drawn writing in the endless drawing, a work without a foreseeable end. Even if the drawn words are encrypted, their is no mystery about their meaning. Unterberger offers complicity to the visitors. His code can be accessed in the exhibition and the translations are inscribed in the individual motifs. Florian Unterberger (*1973 in Bad Ischl/Upper Austria) lives and works in Vienna.
