On the occasion of sekretas’ opening weekend, digestivo responds to the exhibition and its contributors by way of the palate. Acting at times as host to other artists’ practices, digestivo’s role hovers mostly in and around the kitchen, providing food and fostering a space for encounters. Thinking through the means of hosting, they aim to investigate the reach of materialities that develop around acts of foraging, fermenting, or preserving: promoting leftovers and immersing them in a future prospect of sharing. Throughout the afternoon, digestivo will serve edible offerings that swerve along the logic of sekretas, its materials, and its riddles.

digestivo is a collaborative initiative founded in 2019 by artists Lucía Bayón and Lukas Meßner as an itinerant project space in Rotterdam. Past events include: Tempest Gourmand with Pedro Herrero Ferrán at Haus Wien, Vienna (2020); A voice can only break a glass that already has a crack in it with Hrefna Hörn Leifsdóttir, Rotterdam (2020); Colofonia líquida y saliva with María Nolla Mateos, Rotterdam (2019); and Moodring II, Rotterdam (2019).

Lucía Bayón (b. 1994, Spain) centers her practice around sculpture and writing. She lives in Madrid. 

Lukas Meßner (b. 1989, Italy) is an artist working with sculpture, text, and images. He lives in Vienna.

By way of movement and speech, curator and writer Raimundas Malašauskas will elaborate on sekretas, a peculiar Lithuanian term that both means secret and secretary, the old-fashioned piece of furniture that serves as a place for reading, writing, and storing paper. sekretas is also the title of Marija Olšauskaitė’s exhibition and the name of a popular game played by youngsters in Lithuania. Playing it, children would enter a courtyard or a garden and place small objects under a piece of glass: flower petals, pictures, a note, golden bottle caps, shells, and other characteristic elements would be organized and composed into a material expression of friendship. Altogether, Malašauskas will dive into the word’s complexity, its multiple meanings, and the many (hi)stories it provokes.

Raimundas Malašauskas (b. 1973, Lithuania) has co-written an opera libretto (Cellar Door by Loris Greaud, Palais de Tokyo, 2008), co-produced a television show (CAC TV, Vilnius, 2004 – 2006), served as an agent for dOCUMENTA (13), released Paper Exhibition, the book of his selected writings (Sternberg Press, 2012), co-curated 9th Baltic Triennial of International Art, Vilnius (2005), the 9th Mercosul Biennal, Porto Alegre (2013), the 9th Liverpool Biennale (2017), and exhibited his childhood paintings in a choregraphic composition by Alix Eynaudi (2019). His most recent projects are trust & confusion, an eight-month-long live art exhibition at Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong (2021), 914, the Russian Pavilion in the 59th Venice Biennale (closed), and Mars Returns, a 14-hour long event at Mykolas Žilinskas Gallery, Kaunas (2022).

sekretas (Lithuanian for secret) is an exhibition by Marija Olšauskaitė that peers into her long-standing affinity with the glares of glass. It focuses on a particular facet of her work that is attentive to the ways in which sculptural practice and the social lean into one another.

sekretas assembles suspended surfaces to look through, resting vessels to hold, vividly colored benches to carry, a vitreous pond, hand-blown tableware, reproductions of flowers in so far as the logic of glass permits, words jotted in notebooks, plants picked in Uzbekistan, and the company of friends and neighbors to keep.

sekretas borrows its name from an urban leisure activity practiced by youngsters in Lithuania and many other countries that were part of the former Soviet Union. Zestfully, children would enter a courtyard and place small objects under a pane or a found shard of glass: flower petals, golden bottle caps, shells, beautiful rubbish, and other idiosyncratic elements to be organized and composed into material expressions of friendship. The glass would then be covered with soil or dust, as a sekretas recedes from view. A fortunate passer-by or friend on the lookout might then find these secrets, these minute compositions of mundane, seemingly nonsensical elements, which would carry the greatest meaning for those who knew.

sekretas looks into that joint where sculpture, composition, and the making of social bonds revel in each other’s presence. Here, glass takes on a distinct role. It frames and shelters composition and friendship, both concretely and symbolically, while simultaneously prefiguring their fragility and potential shattering.

sekretas presents works that are imbued with a whimsical and slippery attitude toward the fixity of sculpture. They quiver between traditions of craft and ornament, the social role of sculpture, and the ways in which objects populate daily lives and customs. At the same time, Olšauskaitė’s pieces also harbor the idiosyncrasies of cryptic abstraction and enigmatic composition. Throughout her work resounds the tradition of stained-glass production, which flourished in post-war Lithuania, then often seen in public sculptures and state commissions. The artisans who remain in these glass workshops and whom Olšauskaitė continues to visit embody and transmit this artistry, which she, in turn, transforms and bends.

sekretas is punctuated by the appearance and vanishing of works by fellow artists, friends, and guests. Unannounced, their liminal presence will manifest itself throughout the exhibition.

sekretas is accompanied by an extensive public program that will unfold throughout the opening weekend. Moving between sonic contributions, a lecture performance, publications, and edible offerings, sekretas will be activated by Lauren Duffus, Antanas Lučiūnas / Ragemore, digestivo (Lucía Bayón and Lukas Meßner), Raimundas Malašauskas, BILL (Julie Peeters), and Han-Gyeol Lie.

sekretas will also be accompanied by secrets, a publication that gathers words, plants, and glass contributed by Elena Narbutaitė, Marija Olšauskaitė, Maria Tsoy, Aleksandra Krivulina, and Tom Engels, designed by Julie Peeters.

Marija Olšauskaitė (b. 1989, Lithuania) lives and works in Vilnius. Her solo exhibitions include Song Sing Soil (with Eglė Budvytytė), Vleeshal, Middelburg (2023); I Want to Stuff My Heart with Moss, Editorial, Vilnius (2022); Witness on our behalf, Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius (2019); and Marija & Petras Olšauskai: Miss Bird, Art in General, New York City (2014), among others. Olšauskaitė participated in group exhibitions internationally, including The Milk of Dreams, the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia (2022); and suddenly it all blossoms, RIBOCA2, Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art (2020); Homegrown, Hauser & Wirth, online (2020); I walk the night, PM8/Francisco Salas, Vigo (2019); Joy and Mirror. Port city, Fourtoseven gallery, Riga (2016); and Karaoke Police, Kunstverein, Amsterdam (2015), Nomas, Rome (2014), Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius (2013), among others.

sekretas is realized with the support of the Embassy of Lithuania in Austria and the Honorary Consulate of Lithuania in Graz.

Grazer Kunstverein presents On/Off/ice, a new work by the Graz-based artist Markus Wilfling, on the occasion of Wilfling’s edition for the Rotary Art Collection 2023. As per yearly tradition, Grazer Kunstverein collaborates with a local artist whom the Rotary Club Graz-Zeughaus invited to create an artist edition for a good cause. Grazer Kunstverein gives the artist the opportunity to show a new work developed for the occasion. The exhibition is part of the Rotary Club’s philanthropic initiative, the Rotary Art Collection, which aims to provide financial support to disadvantaged students. In previous years, the Styrian artists Wolfgang Becksteiner and Alfredo Barsuglia were presented in this series.

Markus Wilfling (b. 1966, Innsbruck, lives in Graz) is a sculptor who studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Graz with Gerhard Lojen and at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna with Bruno Gironcoli. His recent exhibitions have been held in the following institutions, including: Kunsthaus Muerz (2021); Atelierhaus der Akademie der bildenden Künste, Vienna (2020); Kunst im öffentlichen Raum Steiermark (2019); ZKM Karlsruhe (2019); Universalmuseum Joanneum, Graz (2018); Salzburger Kunstverein (2018); Künstlerhaus, Graz (2017); < rotor >, Graz (2014); Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina, Novi Sad (2011); Kunsthaus, Graz (2010). His works are part of the collections of Museum Liaunig Neuhaus/Suha; Museum Moderner Kunst Kärnten; mumok, Vienna; and Neue Galerie, Graz. His publication Markus Wilfling standby.on.run was published by SCHLEBRÜGGE.EDITOR in 2020. In addition to fellowships abroad in Rome and Mexico and a working scholarship from the Province of Styria, Wilfling has received the State Scholarship for Fine Arts from the BMUKK and the Förderungspreis für bildende Kunst from the City of Graz.

Iris Touliatou
sweeter and lower, 2022

Perspex box, ground stationery, former Grazer Kunstverein CI
Edition: 8
18,5 x 14 x 2,2 cm
Numbered and signed certificate
€ 500,00* (incl. VAT, excl. packing and shipping costs)

sweeter and lower contains some of the remnants of untitled (sweet and low), a work presented during appendage, Iris Touliatou’s solo exhibition at Grazer Kunstverein in 2022. untitled (sweet and low) was the result of having transformed the old, left-over stationery of the Grazer Kunstverein— half white / half red—into a pink pulp, which then was scattered over the floors of the building. By shredding the stationery with a blender, a pink fluff emerged from the transactional paper that in a former life used to transmit official communication, invoices, announcements, etc. sweeter and lower gathers fragments of that action and compresses them into a plexiglass box. Contained and preserved, the left-overs of what once was whole meet again and are turned into a vivid chromatic picture in hues of pink.

*The editions are available to the members of Grazer Kunstverein. It is possible to become a member when purchasing an edition.

Iris Touliatou (b. 1981, Athens) lives and works in Athens. Recent solo exhibitions include mothers, Rodeo, London/Piraeus (2022); appendage, Grazer Kunstverein (2022); Organs, EXILE, Vienna (2020); and Overnight, Radio Athènes, Athens (2019). Touliatou has been part of the group exhibitions SIREN (some poetics), Amant, New York (2022); 2021 Triennial: Soft Water Hard Stone, New Museum, New York (2021–22); Work and Leisure, Milan (2022), When I state I am an anarchist, PLATO, Ostrava (2022); Anabasis, Rodeo Gallery, Athens (2022); Eclipse, the 7th Athens Biennale (2021); Lives of an Object, Andreas Melas and ARCH, Athens (2021); The Way In, Haus N Athen, Athens (2021); Anti Structure, DESTE Foundation, Athens (2021); Interval, Goethe-Institut Athen (2021); The Same River Twice, Benaki Museum, Athens (2019); and Manifesta 12, 5x5x5: Selected Projects, Palermo (2018), among others.

Maria Toumazou
Old Town Street (towards Photo Net), 2022

Pigment print on Hahnemühle FineArt Baryta, 325 gsm
Edition: 10 + 3 AP
16 x 23,5 cm, unframed
Numbered and signed certificate
€ 375,00* (incl. VAT, excl. packing and shipping costs)

Old Town Street (towards Photo Net) depicts the expressive painting of a female nude displayed in a framer’s shop window and is layered with the reflection of Nicosia’s old town. Resembling the processing and the becoming of an image, the analog photograph was shot at a close distance to Photo Net, Toumazou’s local photography store, where her pictures are developed and printed. The photograph is part of a series of 26 pictures resulting from numerous walks through Toumazou’s hometown. The series appeared for the first time in R, C, the publication that accompanied RHYTHM, CITIZEN, Toumazou’s solo exhibition at Grazer Kunstverein in 2022. One of them is now available as an exclusive artist’s edition. 

*The editions are available to the members of Grazer Kunstverein. It is possible to become a member when purchasing an edition.

Maria Toumazou (b. 1989, Cyprus) is an artist and publisher based in Nicosia. Recent solo presentations include RHYTHM, CITIZEN, Grazer Kunstverein (2022); SCRAP B, Point Centre for Contemporary Art at Moufflon Bookshop, Nicosia (2022); Coil, Hot Wheels Athens (2021); and Fair-face Elysée, Thkio Ppalies, Nicosia (2019), among others. Toumazou has participated in group exhibitions including SISTERHOOD, Streaming voices unifying energies, Angelo Plessas and P.E.T. Projects, Nicosia (2021); Touch Release, Nassauischer Kunstverein Wiesbaden (2021); Hypersurfacing, NiMAC, Nicosia (2019); Soft stone documents, Municipal Arts Centre, Limassol (2017), among others. Neoterismoi Toumazou (Toumazou’s former collective with Orestis Lazouras and Marina Xenofontos) was invited as a special guest to the Cyprus Pavilion at Biennale Arte 2017, Venice, curated by Jan Verwoert. She was a guest student at Städelschule, Frankfurt, after completing her studies at Goldsmiths College, London, and the Glasgow School of Art.

R, C appeared in conjunction with the exhibition RHYTHM, CITIZEN by Maria Toumazou. It is the third in a series of small volumes of correspondence, responses, and conversations, which accompanies the exhibition program of Grazer Kunstverein. R, C is a visual and textual passage through living and making in the Nicosian landscape. It combines artist statement, photography, and rap. R, C summons three voices: On The Solitary Crossing Of Impassable Passages, a statement by Koula Savvidou, written on the occasion of her eponymous exhibition at Diaspro Art Center, Nicosia, in 1995; EXHAUST, a selection of lyrics written by Tasos Lamnisos / x.ypno for ΕΞΩΣΤ (2021), a 10-track album by steliosilchuk & x.ypno; and a selection of 26 photographs taken by Maria Toumazou between 2021 and 2022. 

Editor: Tom Engels
Conceptual Development: Maria Toumazou, Tom Engels, Julie Peeters
Translation: EXHAUST: Tasos Lamnisos, Maria Toumazou/ On The Solitary Crossing of Impassable Passages: Maria Toumazou, Koula Savvidou, Tom Engels
Graphic Design: Julie Peeters
Printing and Binding: Benedict Press, Münsterschwarzach
Edition: 350
Typeface: Kleisch GK by Chiachi Chao
64 pages, color, English
ISBN: 978-3-9505230-2-7
Price: 9,- euro, 5,- euro for members

Join us for the book launch of Borrowed, published Thkio Ppalies Project Space, Nicosia, and Grazer Kunstverein (2022).

Borrowed is a bi-lingual publication (English and Greek) that presents a series of visual essays and texts, exploring notions of sharing and indebtedness, writing and sentiment, appropriation and homage, memory and time. It is the outcome of Maria Toumazou’s fellowship with Formworks, a curatorial initiative developed by Evagoras Vanezis at Thkio Ppalies Project Space, Nicosia. The publication features contributions by Aristotelis Nikolas Mochloulis, Georgia Triantafyllidou, Maya Tounta, Koula Savvidou, Evagoras Vanezis, and Maria Toumazou herself. 

The publication is co-published by Thkio Ppalies Project Space, Nicosia and Grazer Kunstverein. The realization of it is kindly supported by Hot Wheels Athens, and the Cultural Services of the Deputy Ministry of Culture, Cyprus.

On the occasion of RHYTHM, CITIZEN, the solo exhibition by Maria Toumazou, x.ypno & steliosilchuk will perform EXHAUST, a 10-track album released by Moneda in 2021. The album blends trap and garage music with distinct Cypriot motifs while confessing youthful sentiments of uprootedness and separation. Roaming through the landscapes of Cyprus, the album is “framed by a car’s windshield, as it cruises through the Cypriot scenery: from the rocky mountainsides in Paphos’ forest, through the tunnel, stretching all the way to the roundabout in old town Nicosia. […] Like a car’s rim on the highway’s asphalt as it hits fifth gear, passing by cyclamens rooted in rocks and they, in turn, cannot but breath in its fumes and turn them into oxygen.”

The concert takes place at CAFÉ WOLF, Annenstraße 18.

Tasos Lamnisos / x.ypno (b. 1998, Cyprus) is a musician and writer based in Nicosia. He is a member of NYX, a Nicosia-based DIY electronic music collective, and XMK, a four-member rap group. His practice as a producer and singer-songwriter centers upon the question of (be-)longing with a pronounced focus on the themes of partition, uprooting, and social exclusion. In 2021, he completed his MSc in Political Science: Nationalism, Ethnic Conflict, and Development. He is the author of Hyphenated Identities: Voices from the Watchtower During the Cypriot Civil War, Cambridge University Press, 2022.

Stelios Ilchuk (b. 1993, Cyprus) is a visual artist and music producer based in Paphos. Having lived in London, the UK music scene significantly impacted his musical output, focusing on minor melodies and heavy bass lines through an intuitive way of music making. His recent return to Cyprus sparked an exploration of the local music scene and a musical expression of the relief and struggles of being back home while expanding on local and global musical influences.

“It all started with a swinging bell,” she said. “I want the bell to crack.”

When a bell is struck, sign and time are given. For citizens to celebrate life in Old Town, for them to hide or worship, to lay off workers and to start again, to be reminded that life is finite, for the clearance sale to begin, for the photographer to rinse her exposed paper, a safelight blinking. Every time a bell is struck, it rings within. In this mutual implication of time and populace, RHYTHM, CITIZEN resounds.

RHYTHM, CITIZEN converges the brand names of two manufacturers of clocks and watches: Rhythm and Citizen. Found and coupled, they set the scene for an exhibition that unravels and complicates how the measures of time move and make move; how they give pulse to artifacts, their fictions and patina; how their fleetingness tantalizes the making of an image.

RHYTHM, CITIZEN punctuates the Grazer Kunstverein by way of sculpture, photography, design, and situated interventions. It marks the instance when time is halted, frozen and encrusted, and then again set into motion. It wandered from the city of Nicosia, like a passage or a crossing, like a captor of time—eyes unfurled, then, again, shut.

RHYTHM, CITIZEN takes shape through the cadence of a poem, the periodicity of labor, the sliding of glass doors, the frequencies of life, the patterns of music, and the movement marked by a succession of strong and weak elements. 

RHYTHM, CITIZEN gathers friends and collaborators, neighbors and facilitators: Felix Taylor (Platten Haus), Koula Savvidou, Tasos Lamnisos (x.ypno), Stelios Ilchuk, Claudia Paschalides, Kyriakos Kyriakides, Marietta Mavrokordatou, and Photo Net.

RHYTHM, CITIZEN is an occasion for EXHAUST [ΕΞΩΣΤ], an album by x.ypno & steliosilchuk to be played aloud and alive, and for Borrowed, a publication by Maria Toumazou, Aristotelis Nikolas Mochloulis, Georgia Triantafyllidou, Maya Tounta, Koula Savvidou, and Evagoras Vanezis, to be launched.

RHYTHM, CITIZEN is accompanied by R,C, a publication that combines artist statement, photography, and Cypriot rap, with contributions by Koula Savvidou, Tasos Lamnisos (x.ypno), Stelios Ilchuk, Maria Toumazou, Julie Peeters, and Tom Engels.

A bell is struck within her and keeps on ringing.
A bell is struck and keeps on ringing.

Maria Toumazou (b. 1989, Cyprus) is an artist and publisher based in Nicosia. Recent solo presentations include SCRAP B, Point Centre for Contemporary Art at Moufflon Bookshop, Nicosia (2022); Coil, Hot Wheels Athens (2021); and Fair-face Elysée, Thkio Ppalies, Nicosia (2019), among others. Toumazou has participated in group exhibitions including SISTERHOOD, Streaming voices unifying energies, Angelo Plessas and P.E.T. Projects, Nicosia (2021); Touch Release, Nassauischer Kunstverein Wiesbaden (2021); Hypersurfacing, NiMAC, Nicosia (2019); Soft stone documents, Municipal Arts Centre, Limassol (2017), among others. Neoterismoi Toumazou (Toumazou’s former collective with Orestis Lazouras and Marina Xenofontos) was invited as a special guest to the Cyprus Pavilion at Biennale Arte 2017, Venice, curated by Jan Verwoert. Toumazou is the (co-)founder of Neoterismoi Toumazou, Maria Editions, and Metafora. She was a guest student at Städelschule, Frankfurt, after completing her studies at Goldsmiths College, London, and the Glasgow School of Art. RHYTHM, CITIZEN is her first institutional solo presentation.   

The exhibition is realized with the generous support of the Cyprus Deputy Ministry of Culture – Cultural Services, Point Centre for Contemporary Art, and steirischer herbst ’22. Maria Toumazou’s residency at Grazer Kunstverein is made possible with the support of the Cyprus Deputy Ministry of Culture – Cultural Services (through the TRANSIT 2022 Artist Residency Programs scheme). 

The exhibition would not be possible without the support of Hot Wheels Athens, Claudia Paschalides, Mariel Kouveli, and Orestis Lazouras.