With delicate lyricism, Karina Mendreczky creates fictional landscapes
using light and shadow. As a recipient of the 2015 Kunsthalle Wien
Prize, she created the installation Thin Dream at Kunsthalle Wien
Karlsplatz. Silhouettes of acrylic trees, whose details were hand-carved
with an etching needle, were projected onto the back wall of the gallery
to create the impression of actual large-format drawings. Mendreczky
draws on the techniques of graphic printing and stage design to remind
us that nature cannot be reproduced, although it frequently serves as a
projection for our desires. At the same time, Thin Dream reflects on
Mendreczky's constant travels between Hungary, where she was born, and
Austria, questioning the idea of a fixed sense of place.
Karina Mendreczky is the joint recipient of the 2015 Kunsthalle Wien
Prize. Along with a color insert, this publication includes an essay on
Mendreczky's work by Bärbel Vischer, a conversation between the artist,
Lucas Gehrmann, and Nicolaus Schafhausen, as well as forewords by Gerald
Bast and Schafhausen.
Copublished with Kunsthalle Wien and University of Applied Arts Vienna
on the occasion of the exhibition "Preis der Kunsthalle Wien 2015,"
November 27, 2015-January 17, 2016.
**Contributors
**Gerald Bast, Lucas Gehrmann, Nicolaus Schafhausen, Bärbel Vischer
