Totale (Nora Steiner), Die Suche nach dem letzten Grund (Anna Witt)
Nora Steiner, Anna Witt

Nora Steiner (*1981, Zurich) is concerned with painting perceptual phenomena while making use of the basic principles of painting. Following recipes from the Renaissance she paints in thin, coloured layers using old master glaze techniques on a chalk base. At Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen she is presenting a work cycle that she has worked on over the last five years. It is made up of large-format canvases that the artist slowly intensified with coloured glazes in technically elaborate processes. Starting from her interest in black holes, Nora Steiner approaches the unknown and the invisible in a painterly manner. The result is spectacular pictures that develop a strong spatial presence despite their simplicity. An artist’s booklet will be published on occasion of the exhibition.

Anna Witt’s (*1981, Wasserburg am Inn/DE) favoured tools are performance and video. The artist uses them to examine socio-political subjects and how the body, its sphere of action and its movements also always carry a message.In St. Gallen Witt is showing two of her most recent works, amongst them the project Durch Wände gehen (Going through Walls,2015): On the basis of two individual experiences of fleeing she looks for analogies between current and historical events that have significantly changed the lives of the protagonists – one a Syrian who fled to Saxony, and one a German who fled from the former GDR. In the video work Gemeinschaft ohne Eigenschaften (Community without Properties,2015) the artist observes a group who has coincidentally gathered in a room and the behaviour of the participants in this enforced community over time. For the exhibition at Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen the artist is working on a site-specific film project. In collaboration with the debating club of the University of St. Gallen (HSG) she examines the sensitive question, “Why not talk about the truth?”.