Artists

Augustin Katz

Press release

Cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye. There exists a promise that makes this spectacle of brushing lightly against the possibility of death, or at the very least of blindness (which, if we're to be honest, for a painter must surely be the worse of the two curses on offer)… exceedingly taunting-going-on-borderline-haunting. A nursery rhyme confounded with a religious utterance, a precocious attempt at a Hail Mary for a lost cause. It's all child's play, although it remains unclear as to who's playing, what's the catch, and just where the hell everyone has gone. Hiding behind the curtains, snickering, taking pleasure in the pure perversion of figuration that is currently unfolding between these four walls. For those in the know, the red light burning continuously inside a church, set next to the altar or tabernacle, signals the physical presence of Christ's body within the holy grounds. Without it, the magic spell is broken, the sanctuary becoming nothing more than yet another brick-and-mortar shell. Desacralised, dethroned, irrelevant, forgotten. No such light emanates from the closed structure of Nodale II (pursuit) (all works 2026), a miniature blackened diorama, a toy train track and power station that hovers discreetly a few centimetres off the ground. Blissfully oblivious, obstinate even, running in circles, speeding up, slowing down, never stopping, never ceasing, the train endures, without a purpose unless it is that if it were to halt, the spell would do so too. Playing with toys is not a serious pursuit. Although, free from the weight of social dos and don'ts, it is only a child who can see through the surrounding bullshit. In Volker Schlöndorff's screen adaptation of The Tin Drum (1979), the film follows the life of Oskar, a preternaturally gifted child and his toy drum, whose deafening beat signals his young owner's growing displeasure or distress. Similarly, it is only young Danny in The Shining (1980), spinning down the haunted hallways of the Overlook Hotel on his three-wheeler, who is attuned to the presence of ghosts, evil and demonic possession. What if I were to tell you, though, that this is all an act? Augustin Katz has woven together an intricate musical partita of shady characters, suspicious shadows, sickening perspectives, queasy colours and dead ends. A drummer boy beats to his own rhythm; a black-clad dancer maintains fourth position even though she stands trapped between two walls; a rickety staircase spells out the probability of a broken neck; and what I take to be a conductor, faceless, is inserting the thinnest of batons, fear-inducing instrument of power and authority, into the spongy surface of his crown. All fragmented collateral of a would-be music box, but with the innocence stripped away. Thick as an icon and painted on wood, these works carry the stigma of mythological Sirens, unable to fully break free from the constraints of pigment, discipline, framing and technique that govern all painting, no matter how audaciously free, so instead they seduce the viewer into the trap of the author's making. A determined voice resonates, but it remains unclear as to who is the hunter and who is the prey, the point of a pursuit being that it can take any direction. To believe in something, one has to play along. - Anya Harrison