Hans Schabus: Nichts geht Mehr at IAC Villeurbanne

The Institut d'art contemporain (IAC) in Villeurbanne presents a solo exhibition by Austrian artist Hans Schabus (born 1970) titled 'Nichts geht Mehr' (Nothing Works Anymore), running from February 25 to April 24, 2011. The show features diverse works including a dismantled caravan, a bucolic video of the artist fleeing, and a chromatic collection of stamps. A recurring motif is the artist's studio, explored in the film 'Atelier' (2010), where shots of the studio and its surroundings are punctuated by gunshots sampled from a western. 'Der Letzer Dreck' (2007) is a small pile of debris gathered when Schabus left his former studio. The exhibition's centerpiece is 'Meteriss' (2011), an extremely taut chain that wraps around the interior space of the art center, threatening to break its walls, evoking a gravitational force akin to a black hole pulling the building inward. Schabus previously participated in the IAC group show 'Fabricateurs d'espaces' in 2010, where he masked the building with a large wooden palisade. His earlier works include a 2002 video for Manifesta 4 in Frankfurt exploring sewers in a small boat, and a 2005 transformation of the Austrian pavilion at the Venice Biennale into a labyrinthine bunker.