Klára Hosnedlová Creates a Temporal Shift

‘To Infinity’, Klára Hosnedlová’s solo exhibition at Kestner Gesellschaft, adopts a holistic vision of architecture as everything that inhabits a given space. The artist has blocked the observation windows of the former Jugendstil swimming pool, partly covered the entrance doors with partition walls, concealed the gaps between structural columns using opaque plastic sheets, and overlaid the flooring with vinyl printed with a repeating image of bedsheets. The result is a wholly immersive environment that sets the tone for what is to come.

Each of the institution’s two floors hosts a series of large-scale, pendant sculptures. In the upper gallery, white epoxy forms resemble sinuous, elongated, testicular balloons that harbour mysterious entities – perhaps budding lifeforms (all works Untitled [From the Series To Infinity], 2023). The lower floor houses a group of stalagmite-like sculptures made from a mixture of linen tow and yarn in gradient browns, which recall the Kukeri costumes used in traditional Bulgarian masquerades. Primitive in appearance and asserting their presence through their imposing size and organic smell, this second group of works serves as a direct contrast to the aseptic atmosphere of the upper gallery with its sleek sculpture-cum-incubators. In this at once archaic yet futuristic setting, temporality itself becomes a subject.

Embedded within each hanging sculpture is a hyperrealist embroidery. Long and thin, these aluminium-mounted textiles feature close-up depictions of body parts, corset-like garments and technological gadgets. Nipples enlarged by magnifying glasses and sensually depicted shoulder blades offer intriguing glimpses of individuals that, by concealing more than they reveal, leave us wondering to whom these bodily fragments belong.

A quick look at the gallery website reveals that the embroideries, in fact, bare a resemblance to documentary photographs of a performance held in the exhibition space, in which lean, androgynous-looking models – dressed in fringy, crocheted, 1970s-style outfits – interact with the sculptures. Rather than offering a clear narrative, however, the performers explore the possibilities of the exhibition space: they play with slabs of clay, press themselves against the translucent plastic sheeting and hold onto the metallic handles on the walls of the surrounding hallways illuminated by yellowish lighting. In the absence of performers this same lighting emphasizes the theatricality of the empty space and shifts the focus onto the architecture and the sculptures, which become the real storytellers.

In her essay ‘The Split Wall: Domestic Voyeurism’ (1992), Beatriz Colomina describes the interiors designed by Austrian architect Adolf Loos as ‘stage sets’ or ‘theatrical architecture’. By screening windows with blinds or positioning them so that they looked onto other interior spaces rather than facing outwards, Loos created spaces in which, Colomina argues, ‘inhabitants are both actors in and spectators of the scene’. Similarly, Hosnedlová’s enveloping installation recasts every element as a character in a play of her devising, one which tells a speculative origin story of human culture and its imminent transformation through new forms of intelligence.

Klára Hosnedlová’s ‘To Infinity’ is on view at Kestner Gesellschaft, Hannover, until 4 June.

_{Main image: Klára Hosnedlová, ‘To Infinity’, 2023, exhibition view. Costumes: Anna Heim; Performers: Ruth Ikondo, Denis Emmenegger and Matilde Simões. Courtesy: the artist, Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, Berlin, and White Cube, London; Photograph: Zdeněk Porcal - Studio Flusser}