Three Paths to the Lake

The title of the exhibition is a reference to Ingeborg Bachmann’s short story “Three Paths to the Lake” the first lines of which confront the reader with an abstract representation of reality: the description of a hiking map for the Kreuzbergl area in the Austrian town of Klagenfurt. Out of the ten paths marked on the map three are supposed to lead to Lake Wörther, protagonist Elisabeth’s swimming destination. However, none of the paths make her reach there. Walking the various routes becomes a mental journey into her own past and a reflection about her actions. Elisabeth is a photo journalist who has been mainly documenting events in war zones for many years. Self-doubt about whether her photographs are a true rendering of reality constitutes one of the story’s central motifs. The story ends with the protagonist not giving up her job, not losing her faith in its social relevance, and instead leaving for another work assignment.

In the course of the storyline she reaches Lake Wörther in a different way.

With a view to the works of the artists in the exhibition Three Paths to the Lake, Bachmann’s story touches upon central artistic concerns including the reflection of one’s own creation process and the concomitant question of the claim with which one relates one’s own work to reality. The exhibition revolves around painting in the conflicting fields of representationalism and abstraction.