In Linus Riepler's exhibition, home appears as a highly unstable place. Among other things, the artist produced a stop-motion animation in which the apartment of a tousled clay character literally transforms into a carousel. In the two-minute clip, part of a larger spatial installation, everyday items such as a blanket, espresso maker, scooter, or cantilever chair gradually develop a life of their own. The household items eventually condense temporarily into a rotating tangle, briefly forming the protagonist's head into the shape of a stone block. A modern nightmare. Faced with the continual entropy of things to be tamed, the strive of everyday repetitions becomes an image. 'A face that toils so close to stones is already stone itself!' Albert Camus once wrote about the ancient mythic figure Sisyphus. During production, the artist read Camus' essay on the 'absurd hero' of ancient mythology, alongside Kafka's The Castle, which became part of the material. The installation translates the video narrative into a real, walkable space. The carousel cuts into the architecture, its seats referencing the tangle of household goods. The corridor alludes to Kafka's castle and simultaneously to an experienced consumerist labyrinth of an underground shopping street. A telephone receiver inside the work finally acoustically connects the viewers to the world of Sisyphus through Homer's epic.

Riepler himself names the 'intricacy of space, its perception, and the question of how a narrative can be inscribed into a spatial setting' as the central focus of his artistic work. Because the art of storytelling has already produced a rich media history, references to film, theatre, theatre architecture, and various forms of display (such as showcases or dioramas in small vitrines) resonate more or less disctinctly in Riepler's art. The spaces function both as a frame and as part of the artist's narratives. Riepler makes his working process comprehensible, for instance, when presenting an automat sculpture in the exhibition space, which is both an independent work and a reference for the larger installation. Elements of the environment, stage, set, and model converge into a place of artistic experience for the audience. This highlights the manifold encoded nature of architecture and its increasing hybridisation in a casual manner.

In the early nineties, Californian architecture theorist Anthony Vidler worked on delineating the modern root of discomfort in architecture in his architectural history of the uncanny. According to Vidler, architecture has been closely linked with the concept of the uncanny since the late 18th century: 'At one level, the house has provided a site for endless representations of haunting, doubling, dismembering, and other terrors in literature and art. At another level, the labyrinthine spaces of the modern city have been construed as the sources of modern anxiety, from revolution and epidemic to phobia and alienation [...].' The transition between homely and uncanny has remained fluid to this day and has been very present in recent times. The experience of this alienation forms a part of modern urban existence. In Linus Riepler's works, the latent unease finds a vivid form.

Linus Riepler (born 1984 in Vöcklabruck, lives and works in Vienna) From 2004 - 2009 he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts (under Manfred Pernice and Gunter Damisch) and in 2008 at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, Belgium. 2008 at the Koninklijke Academie voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp, Belgium.

The reconstruction of places and situations plays a major role in Linus Riepler's artistic works and often serves as a starting point. His large installations are comparable to stage-like scenes that allow the viewer to experience them through associated or implied stories. Sometimes the audience can actively enter the installations, which consist of simple materials, found objects, self-made objects and moulded sculptures. __

__Selection of solo exhibitions: Bildraum01, Vienna (AUT), 2021, Traklhaus Salzburg, (AUT), 2021, Ada, Vienna (AUT), 2020, Galerie Krinzinger, Vienna (AUT), 2017, Richmond Art Collective, Spokane, (USA), 2017, Galerie Krinzinger, gallery statement, Parallel, Vienna, 2016, Startgalerie, MUSA, Vienna (AUT), 2015, Sightfenster (project space), Gallery Warhus Rittershaus, Cologne (DEU), 2015, der Schaukasten, Vienna (AUT), 2014, Oberösterreichischer Kunstverein, Linz, (AUT), 2014, Galerie Krinzinger, Vienna (AUT), 2011,

Selection of group exhibitions: MUSA Startgalerie, Vienna (AT), 2023, Reimaging Tbilisi, CCA Tbilisi (GEO), Kamikawa, Kumano (JP), 40th Terra Symposium, Galeriji Terra, Kikinda (RS), Solo Booth, Spark Art Fiair, Galerie Krinzinger, 2022, , Six Solo Shows, Krinzinger Projekte, Vienna, 2021, Apeiron - Why Austrians Now?, Radvila Palace Museum of Art, Vilnius, Lithuania, 2021, House of losing control", Vienna Art Week, Vienna (AUT), 2021, That's new and needed II, Brückengalerie, die Kunstsammlung des Landes OÖ, Linz, (AUT), 2021, Kardinal König Kunstpreis - nominierte Werke Kunstraum St. Virgil, Salzburg, (AUT), 2021, KAIR, Kamiyama, Japan, (JPN), 2019, OpenArt-Biennale, Örebro, Sweden (SWE), 2019, _"Thomas Bernhard _(curated by Julia Schlager), Austrian Cultural Forum Berlin, (DEU), 2019, 10th Međunarodni festival vizualnih umjetnosti, Museum Lapidarium, Novigrad, Croatia "Foto" (HRV), Glockengasse 8A, Vienna (AUT), 2019,

Scholarships, prizes and residencies: OÖ Gastatelier, Artist in Residence, Paliano, (IT), Artist in Residence programme by interact projects and CCA Tbilisi, (GEO) Nominated for the Kardinal König Prize, 2021, Kamiyama Artist in Residence Programme, Kamiyama, (JP), 2019, Klemens Brosch Prize, 2017, Artist In Residence Programme in Kuberton, HR (Galerie Krinzinger + Muzej Lapidarium), 2017, Artist in Residence, Laboratory Spokane, Spokane, Washington (USA), Symposium Litomyšl, Litomyšl (CZ), 2016, Heinrich Gleissner Förderpreis, 2014, Theodor Körner Preis, 2013, Anni und Heinrich Sussmann Stipendium, 2013, STARTStipendium des bmukk, 2011, Artist In Residence Programme of Galerie Krinzinger in Petömihályfa, (HUN), 2010

Press release courtesy Galerie Krinzinger, Vienna. Text: Kito Nedo.