TIME is the first solo exhibition of the artist Anna-Sophie Berger.The biggest piece in the show combines a storage shed appropriated from an island society and a candy sold in Serbia. The candy is called Time and it comes in different flavours. The Shed keeps Time protected, Time is building and filling the Shed. Structures in public spaces are based on the premise, that no one would take more than they need. Anna-Sophie Berger understands her foreign environment through storage and transport, two basic functions in industrialized society. Both of these, as well as any encounter with the unfamiliar, assume (mutual) trust and respect. What strikes me is that there should be nothing decorative about trust and respect and that modesty is a show of good taste – speaking of signs but also of Berger’s objects. Excessive consumption is potentially harmful both with time and candy. Natalija Paunic
Anna-Sophie Berger (b.1989, Austria; lives and works in New York and Vienna) creates work that connects individual perception and intimate use with questions of material reality as a part of socio-economic circulation and consumption. Populating body as much as space, her objects freely traverse sites and systems of value, physical and through image. While preserving this mobility they complicate a reading as discrete objects, encompassing elements of material transience such as decay, malleability or modularity.Berger has presented solo exhibitions at: MUMOK, Vienna; Kunsthaus Bregenz; 21Haus, Vienna; JTT, New York and Emanuel Layr Vienna and Rome. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at: Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem; MUMOK, Vienna; S.M.AK., Gent; Kunstverein Munich; Contemporary Art Center, Vilnius; Kestnergesellschaft, Hannover; Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna; Rogaland Kunstsenter, Stavanger; Salzburger Kunstverein; 9th Berlin Biennial; Künstlerhaus, Halle für Kunst & Medien KM-, Graz. She is the recipient of the ars viva award 2018 and of the 2017 First Kapsch Contemporary Art Prize.