EEK!
COMIC ART RELOADED

On Thursday, 26th November 2009 we will celebrate a premiere at the AM CUBICLE-contemporary artspace! For the first time the Austrian photographer Georg Schnellnberger and his team present the unique photo comic EEK! and invite you, together with Advanced Minority, to an opening night party with a difference: in the course of the exhibition of the same name the visitor enters the dark world of EEK!, gets to know main and supporting characters and is in the middle of things instead of viewing them from the outside.

Somewhere between placards and food pics professional photographer Georg Schnellnberger asks himself the question why comics are exclusively reserved for illustrators. He has no answer. Even less can he explain to himself, why no other photographer has approached this subject up to now. The staging of quirky characters, the lustful mystification and its realization has appealed to him for some time, and so it came to be that Georg Schnellnberger, as master of photographic perfection, managed to fuse two originally unrelated disciplines into a splendid spectacle.

Juggling between classic comic and top-class photographic practice EEK! captivates with unique metaphorical language and remarkable, since exceptional picture aesthetics. Unusual, daring perspectives, atmospheric lighting sceneries and eroticising productions seduce the reader and immerse him into another world. Barriers are knowingly crossed, established clichés are reviewed and the art of comics newly interpreted. EEK! shows how far one can go today, using photography and image editing and how, with a little imagination, the limits of reality can be extended, blurred and re-set.

…And since Georg Schnellnberger knew that he could not manage such an extensive project on his own he went to gain a group of dedicated people, with whom he could realize this project at all. The volunteers, such as Copy Writer Sandra Stuhlhofer, Art Director Thorsten Beham, Picture Editor Julia Müller-Maenher, 3D Artist Roman Saravia (Friendly Fire), Make-up Artists Anna Anyikude and Maria Becker, as well as Theatre Outfitter Bianca Fladerer were excited by the idea from the start. And so they worked together for approximately one year between job and bedtime to cast an action-packed story into epic pictures worth seeing.

So Georg Schnellnberger leads us through the dark and nebulous city called Ebonyfields, an unpleasant refuge for all kinds of crooks and criminals. The personal stories of its inhabitants intensify and lead to an emotionally touching showdown. To look for morals or a bad conscience is in vain. All the better for the viewer, because as a confidant he is integrated into the circle of insiders and experiences the shady figures and their conflicting battles. Being a witness he is directly next to, above or behind the victim, which breathes its last bit of life’s energy into a vanishing echo. Despite all the brutality, the beastly cruelty and the perceptible aggression the pictures seem to be less terrible and repulsive than fascinating, captivatingly beautiful and surprisingly artistic … and precisely for this reason it could not just amount to a tired comic presentation. Advanced Minority recognized the exceptional potential of EEK! and created, together with Georg Schnellnberger, a cool exhibition that appeals to both comic enthusiasts as well as those interested in art.

Vernissage Th. 26.11.2009, 6 p.m.
EEK! opens at ADVANCED MINORITY CUBICLE – Contemporary Artspace .
Westbahnstrasse 22 . 1070 Wien

from the 26th of November 2009 to 8th of January 2010
opening hours: Monday to Saturday from 1 to 6 p.m.
web: www.advancedminority.com
contact: teresa.klicpera@advancedminority.com