Opening, September 23, 6 pm
Exhibition, September 24 – November 7, 2025
Jonas Morgenthaler’s artistic practice stems from the realm of sculpture and assemblage. Using a wide variety of materials, from found items to modified everyday objects, he creates works that trigger associative chains in the viewer’s mind. Objects are set in a relationship to each other, sometimes communicating, other times in contradiction, and embedded in existing spatial contexts. Often small in scale, his sculptures seem to nestle into the respective surroundings, yet, with their idiosyncratic compositions, they remain foreign bodies.
Rather than referring to a specific narrative, the artist employs his so-called xenobjects to investigate the impacts exhibited objects have on narrative systems. “Personal memories link previously unrelated elements and become stimulatives for understanding what is in front of us,” states Jonas Morgenthaler. “By questioning the properties of objects, images, and the way we engage with them, I see the most productive practice to stress the normative narratives surrounding us.”
For Kunstraum Lakeside, the artist will develop an exhibition with functional mechanisms derived from his xenobjects. The objective is to arrive at an arrangement of elements that “does not intend to produce meaning but resists precisely this form of production.” As such, Jonas Morgenthaler’s presentation reveals the underlying connection between the elements not through the production of meaning but by disrupting these very parameters. Ultimately, it is about inserting a glitch into processes of perception and interpretation that has the potential to undermine normative narratives.
Jonas Morgenthaler (b. 1995 in Switzerland) lives and works in Vienna.
https://xenobjects.wordpress.com
