SALZBURG.- “I am you, when I am I,” writes Paul Celan in his poem “Lob der Ferne”. Ingeborg Bachmann, in turn, asks him in her final, unsent letter to him: “Who am I to you, who after so many years?” And somewhere in between lies a person who encounters someone, touches someone, breaks with someone.

Bachmann and Celan stand as exemplary figures among countless philosophical and literary positions that render the history of humanity as a web of interpersonal relationships. The group exhibition “Relationen” builds on this premise. Presenting works by Arang Choi, Ruben Einsmann, Max Freund, Ayaka Terajima, and Lilly Varga, it brings together five distinct artistic voices that negotiate relationships between individuals, bodies, spaces, and social structures in all their ambivalence.

Heads entwined, expressive faces, tender hands, and anxious gestures – the figures in Lilly Varga's (*1992 in Munich, GER) portraits wrestle with one another, with intimacy and distance, with connection and isolation. Penetrating in their gazes, ambivalent in their proximity, the subjects embody human existence within a Kafkaesque present that is more connected – and yet lonelier – than ever before. In Varga's paintings, the boundary between reality and dream is barely distinguishable; what lingers is an unease that mirrors the complexity of human relations.

In Arang Choi’s (*1992 in Seoul, KOR) paintings, intimate relationships are extended to non-human beings. Drawing on the animist idea that plants, too, possess a soul, Choi creates surrealist worlds in which botany, animal, and human merge into one another. These beings are called “Émulb” and appear in shifting forms throughout the paintings: here, the silhouette of a black bird emerges against a mysterious shadow; there, a snail becomes one with a flower. Between them, sparkling eyes meet the viewer's gaze. Choi constructs images of symbiotic coexistence in which it is not the human being who stands at the centre, but all creatures, inextricably interwoven.

Hybrid figures – equally human, animal, and abstract body – are present in the work of Ayaka Terajima (*1987 in Aichi, JPN) as well. In her ceramic sculptures, the artist weaves together ancient Japanese formal practices dating back to the Jōmon period with relics of modern consumer society, such as food packaging and other waste. What others discard, Terajima collects and carries into her sculptural practice. Her works thus stand in relation not only to cultural history and mythological narratives, but also in a cycle with her fellow human beings – with what they consume and leave behind – and may be read as social critique.

The works of Ruben Einsmann (*1994 in Hamburg, GER) evoke parchment or aged fabric. Drawing on the pictorial language of the early Middle Ages, Einsmann creates works that, on both formal and motific levels, resemble historical tapestries and frescoes. Ghostly figures, faded contours, and fragments of text surface in the large-format paintings; appearing bleached and worn, they resist complete legibility. What remains are traces of historical narratives that engage with art and cultural history. At the same time, the recourse to the tradition of fresco expands the theme of relations to encompass the relationship to spatial structures – for frescoes are inextricably bound to the place in which they came into being.

In the artistic practice of Max Freund (*1992 in Vienna, AUT), too, an intensive act of collecting forms the central point of departure. His painting is nourished by found objects – among them illustrated books and old fabrics. By taking up these objects, Freund enters into a relationship with their prehistory – and assembles in his works a body of artistic and social references that draw cross-connections between art, literature, and music. At the same time, Freund's works expand the theme of relations to a formal dimension: within the paintings, relationships emerge between lines, forms, colours, and patterns that overlap, interweave, and cohere into a whole.

In “Relationen”, the exhibition space itself becomes a site of encounter. It reveals connections and ruptures between the artistic positions and invites reflection on what one recognises about oneself in the gaze of the other – in the spirit of Jean-Paul Sartre: “The Other looks at me and, as such, holds the secret of my being.” – Emila Webhofer