WIASCHTLSTANDL UND TSCHECHERL

‘Wiaschtstlandl und Tschecherl’ is Austrian for ‘hotdog stand and pub’, two places associated both with my homeland of Austria and my home in Denmark.

I grew up in a small town in Austria with only 4,000 inhabitants and its own little ecosystem. My granddad started a butcher’s shop in the town. When he passed away in the 90s, my uncle and mother took over, finally turning it into a pub. It is and always was the centre of our little community and a symbol of hardship, love, struggle, childhood and all sorts of emotions. I see both Austria and Denmark as my home now and I wanted to find something that is so deeply embedded in both cultures – something that everybody can relate to. Places that feel familiar and like home, wherever we go in both countries.

 They’re places where people meet to discuss life, politics and legends, and to tell both happy and sad stories.

For a long time after moving to Denmark, it was difficult for me to appreciate Austria as my home. I was a teenager and everything new was cooler than where I came from.
 However, following the birth of my daughter, I started thinking about this and fell in love with everything I had tried to get away from. 

So, in a way, this exhibition is all about me looking at who I am and what has happened over the past years.

It features paintings drawings of all different shapes and sizes, and installations. 
They’re all packed with texts, words, phrases from letters, tattoos and stories. Nearly each work in the show contains the letter ‘I’ and a ‘face’. Both are very personal things. One is a tattoo I have on my finger based on the Kendrick Lamar song i. The other is a reduced version of a portrait I painted of my fiancée that started my career as an artist. I still own that portrait.

All the works explore the themes of homecoming, growing up, stories, legends, friends, family, hardship, failure and success.

 Finally, I wanted to see what all the AI craziness is about, and used it to describe what childhood in my hometown in Austria was like. It’s scary how accurate it was.

Painsi.