Within the following traces I’ll present an outline of the exhibition; out of an abundance of warning I’ll dispense with judgments or prognoses, although not with any affinities for the concepts mentioned in it. That is the artist Mandla Reuter’s first exhibition within the present premises of this previously Berlin-based gallery. The interventions within the spatial construction are minimal, no locks had been changed, no flooring above had been flooded, although a glass barrier positioned in a passageway may end up in an entire lack of distance. The primary room exhibits the artist’s long-standing addressing of a property within the north of downtown Los Angeles, a metropolis in and of itself receptive to prospering projections of every kind, which the artist acquired in 2011. If I had been to position this textual content in an envelope and ship it to the property handle, it will be returned to me posthaste. The truth that the state of affairs isn’t any totally different for Reuter, the property’s proprietor, is eccentrically poetic and could be verified by way of the 5 returned envelopes exhibited in “Water Speak Grime.” The truth that considered one of these envelopes suits completely between the wall and the window area of interest is considered one of many exact particulars throughout the spatial switch and presentation of the traces, ephemera, and proof from fallow Californian land to this five-story residential and business constructing on Vienna’s Parkring. A transport field with samples of the soil positioned on the bottom, along with a framed zoning map of the district sprayed with floor marking paint representing the respective utility connections, guarantee us of the bodily existence of the property with out touring the roughly 9,817.9 kilometers linear distance and with out coming into it. This train within the space of perceiving an unfamiliar property is accompanied by a clear epoxy forged of the broadly identified structure of Neuschwanstein Fort. The remark of the clear resin forged contrasts with one’s personal colourful reminiscence of this main nineteenth century fort constructing venture—probably the most important examples of European historicism in Bavaria—triggered and bolstered by the knowledge that that is the casting template. Tough contrasts additionally characterize a sequence of galvanized stainless-steel footage, by which the extra refinement of the uncooked materials creates a patina impact, whereas painted fridge magnets affix fiberglass thread motifs to the floor. An additional check alongside the traces of questioning the materialities, capabilities, but additionally potentialities for abstraction within the relationship between artwork and actuality, the fraying and overlapping of 1 into and onto the opposite. As a result of behind the simplicity, the a fortiori sensual outcomes, and between infrastructural informel, pure idea, and environmental critique, there’s all the time the lurking presence of the deeply intricate, clear general context: “NOTHING TO SEE, NOTHING TO HIDE.”

—Christian Egger

at Croy Nielsen, Vienna
till December 16, 2023