Applied Arts Now:
Kay Walkowiak

Applied Arts. Now, a cooperation between the MAK Gallery and the University of Applied Arts Vienna, presents the solo exhibition Forms in Time by Kay Walkowiak. The exhibit features a composition of film and sculptural works that focus on fragments of a subjective phenomenology of (ideal) form. 

Austrian artist Walkowiak developed Forms in Time for the MAK and presents, in addition to his central video work Island (2016), pigment prints and three large-scale sculptures that raise philosophically motivated questions about the narrative conceivability of form on the basis of Far Eastern and Western mentalities.

The character in the video interacts with a black, geometrical object in various and everyday situations. He carries the flat panel, monochrome square through urban settings. The black surface may acquire an immediate status through these interactions, but remains abstract, mystic, and intangible in terms of its meaning.

In his sculptural works, Walkowiak focuses on the utopian potential of form and material. Following several scholarship residencies in Japan, India, and China, he has developed a special interest in the language of form and culture of these countries. He has created a series of works that reference Le Corbusier’s planned city of Chandigarh, which demonstrates the limits of ‘timeless modernity’ as a prototypical, failed urban utopia. He explores the question of timelessness on the basis of bipolar culture-historical mentalities of the “East” and of the “West.”

Walkowiak has been represented in numerous group and solo exhibitions in Austria and abroad since 2004. His solo exhibition is a part of the series Applied Arts. Now, which aims to create a platform for contemporary forms of applied arts, and provide greater visibility for University of Applied Arts Vienna graduates living and working in Vienna.

Forms in Time by Kay Walkowiak will run through 2 October 2016 at MAK Gallery (Stubenring 5, 1010 Vienna).