Igor Eškinja’s spatial interventions oscillate between reality and imagination, materiality and immateriality. His artistic tools are as simple as they are ephemeral – using tape, electrical cables, or even dust and ash, he creates minimal, precise gestures within architectural space. A streetlamp appears as a silhouette on the wall; the contours of a swimming pool suggest the illusion of a hollow space; an ephemeral carpet of dust forms an ornamental pattern across the gallery floor, gradually dissolving under the footsteps of visitors. Eškinja’s works are site-specific. In January 2011, he will engage with the tresor space of the Bank Austria Kunstforum, responding to it with works conceived especially for the location – transforming it into an integral part of his “perceptual” architecture.

A comparable white cube setting also served as the starting point for his 2009 exhibition Made in:side at Galleria Contemporaneo in Venice. Using simple adhesive tape, he constructed – or rather drew – geometric constellations across walls and floors, which, through the viewer’s perceptual process, became legible as imagined volumes, like cardboard boxes. In a subsequent step, the tension between minimalist flatness and illusionistic effect is fixed photographically.

As with all of his installations, these works occupy the threshold between two- and three-dimensional form, with emptiness functioning as an active design element. Eškinja’s art casts doubt on the obvious and the evident, drawing viewers into a phenomenological engagement that challenges them to reconsider their relationship with the visible world.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue published in February 2011 by Verlag für moderne Kunst Nürnberg.