“Work in Progress” is a collaboration with Enes Güç (https://enesguc.com/) crated for New Viewings concept of Barbara Thumm Gallery curated by Philipp Bollmann

The motionless figure of an androgynous giantess occupies almost the entire gallery space in her entangled posture. On its body and around it, small scaffolding grows upwards. But the construction site is deserted. Only the figure, which resembles an avatar, remains in a calm state. A state of “being in-between”. Between day and night. Between dream and reality or even between life and death? It almost seems as if the figure is still being brought back to life.

One is inclined to think of Mary Shelley, whose novel character Victor Frankenstein created an artificial human being 200 years ago – in a time of great upheaval and discovery. Today we find ourselves once again at a turning point in society and technology, which makes us question ourselves as well as the platforms on which we construct ourselves… Is that what Evelyn Bencicova and Enes Güç are alluding to here?

Or are they even illustrating the creation of the „Self-image“?The presentation for the sake of external perception has advanced to a mania that was only enabled by the possibilities of the digital media. We use our extended abilities to make ourselves appear different, often larger than we presumably are. The oversize of the figure is a testament to this. Yet the smaller-scaled scaffolding becomes a metaphor for the process of construction, work in progress. How will it develop? To what extent can it grow?

These questions cannot be answered. Like the figure itself, we as recipients also remain in an intermediate stage. Somewhere between fiction and reality, the visible and the invisible, between what we think to know and what we can imagine.

(Philipp Bollmann)

Evelyn Bencicova (b. Bratislava, 1992) is a visual creative specialising in photography and art direction. Informed by her background in fine art and new media studies (University for Applied Arts, Vienna), Evelyn’s practice combines her interest in contemporary culture with academic research to create a unique aesthetic space in which the conceptual meets the visual.

Evelyn constructs compelling narrative scenarios that blur the lines between reality, memory and imagination “fictions based on truth”. Depicting multifaceted representations as illusions, Evelyn plays with the viewer’s perception to entice them into the labyrinth of her imagination. Her disturbingly beautiful visual language and washed-out colour palette, set within curiously symbolic environments, allow for a deep exploration of the themes that take her works and images far beyond what they reveal at first glance.

Collaboration repertoire includes cultural institutions such as Frieze, Royal Opera House,
Berghain, Kunsthalle Basel, National Portrait Gallery, Institute for Molecular Biotechnology and MQ Vienna. Evelyn's work was published in international art books, magazines (Vogue Portugal, Vogue Czechoslovakia, ZEIT Magazine, Dazed & Confused, i-D, Frieze, GUP, HANT, Metal etc) and exhibited in galleries and museums around the world. She also received numerous awards for
both photography and art-direction including Hasselblad Masters, Taylor Wessing Photography Portrait Prize, Portrait of Britain, Lens Culture award, Gomma Grant, Lens Culture and Berlin Masters 2020 to mention a few.

In 2019 Evelyn completed artistic residency in Mimic Studio which shifted her practice into more immersive and experimental forms of story-telling. Audio-visual work “Next time die consciously” (2018) and “nine sum-sorcery” (2019) were premiered at main stage of Atonal Berlin, MIRA (Barcelona) and Regenerations (Amsterdam). VR installation “Artificial Tears” was exhibited at Berlin Photo Week in Kraftwerk and Synthesis Gallery (Berlin). The work was also awarded by VR Art Prize scholarship by Deutsche Bank.