In summer 2016 Leonid Keller was invited to work and exhibit at a former sawmill in the small village of Neukirchen in Austria. Now a silent witness of generations of lumber production (1830-1970), with massive wooden beams and old machines, Leonid Keller set up a temporary studio at the sawmill and developed their works over a two months working period. The results were presented in the group exhibition Sägewerke.
#shapeofalake, 2016
varnished steel
2064 x 86 x 2mm
adhesive foil on postcard (15 x)
Gebt uns Gedankenfreiheit, 2016
eleven collages
folded book cover
On Solitude, 2016
three-part graphite drawing
210 x 70 cm
dictionairy page
#shapeofalake plays with our perception of color gradients, as they appear in landscape, and puts them in context with popular instagram filters and hashtagging of landscape photography. The installation is composed of a series of sixteen historic postcards and a steel object. Digitally created gradients are applied to significant organic shapes in the postcards. The object, which is inspired by a lake, corresponds in it‘s shape. It is varnished with flip-flop laquer from the car industry. Depending on the viewing angle, it‘s color shifts.
The complex collages in Gebt uns Gedankenfreiheit (Give Us Freedom of Thought) alter the content of a 1952 book on Austria's glorified craftsmanship. Spreads of collaged imagery and reduced text alter the original narrative to poetry detached from its original propagandistic intent.
On Solitude is a graphite drawing of a fictional mountain range, presented as a triptych. It is dsplayed with a page from a Latin to German dictionary, which joins the words "Gebet" (prayer) and "Gebirge" (mountains). On Soitude explores the influence of geographical surroundings on the appreciation of spirituality.