With the wistfully titled “I’m Simply Missing the Mountains,” UTSA’s offsite gallery Terminal 136 opens a window into the creative minds of three young artists attending the Germany’s State Academy of Fine Arts Karlsruhe. Assembling works by Anna Bläser, Veronica Moroder and Lukas Picard, the group show conjures travels both real and imagined while referencing architecture, topography and the hypnotic practice of staring out to sea.
Nodding to communication, misunderstandings and abandonment, Bläser works between fiber art, installation and drawing to invite viewers on a conceptual journey through the Black Forest, a fabric structure based on a 15th-century architectural element said to have healing properties and odd points in between. Further context is revealed through the poetic titles Bläser gives her objects, such as “In Siberia and in Former Times” and “The Rain Is Cooking Soup.”
Drawing from dreams and memories, Moroder creates paintings she says “do not correspond to the external reality — they have their own rules.” At times hinting at perplexing or melancholic narratives, her work takes shape here in an eight-part painting that “can be folded into the shape of a large suitcase.” Created specifically for the exhibition with accordion-pleating techniques associated with leporello books, the three-dimensional painting aims to open “a new space, in which the uncanny is inherent.”
Taking a cue from Robert Frost’s poem “Neither Out Far Nor In Deep,” Picard turns toward the sea for his pensive Hrukkur. Named after the Icelandic term for wrinkles, Hrukkur draws textural parallels between the sea and “crinkles of skin” and begs the question, “What is it that we are looking for out there?” A complementary component he describes as an “unfinished investigation,” Picard’s drawing series How to Invite a Ghost explores the universal concept of loss — “from simple objects to friendships or loved ones.”
In November of this year, the cultural exchange between UTSA and the State Academy of Fine Arts Karlsruhe will culminate with three San Antonio students exhibiting at the Luis Leu Gallery in Germany.
Free, opening receptions 6-9pm Thu, June 6 & Fri, June 7, on view noon-5pm Thu-Sat through June 22, Terminal 136, 136 Blue Star, (210) 758-6246, art.utsa.edu.
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Young German Artists Take Over Blue Star’s Terminal 136 as Part of Cultural Exchange with UTSA
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