Simple figures, represented by geometric shapes like cuboids and cylinders, covered in primary colors + green, with basic signifiers for eyes (two dots) are mapped out on an unspecified field, and seen as if through a filter, in motion, substance-induced, blurred or stuck.
They are staged in surreal, dreamlike scenarios – noncoherent, a draft of a script with unintelligible content. In single images or series of varying lengths resembling slides or filmstrips, the figures (per)form exhibits, not unlike the evidence formally introduced in legal proceedings. Are they individuals, members of a group (gang), representatives of a society, or rather city scapes, nation states, systems, instrumental bodies of failing democracies? Is this a children’s game? A psychological test-run or soul dissection? Are we witnessing a crime? A theatre play? Something funny, hilarious even? No clear picture emerges. A game of domination – clownish, scary, the stuff of nightmares.
(LS)
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Lucie Stahl’s work critically engages with the material dynamics of daily life through constructions that obscure objecthood, image, and sculptural presence. Arranging everyday materials in model-like settings, her practice examines the psychological and ecological conditions shaping contemporary environments, framing material forms as indicators of social systems rather than fixed representations.
Dream State presents a photographic series depicting objects originally used in systemic constellation therapy, emphasizing chromatic intensity, spatial relationships and geometric constellations. Modernist abstraction is being evoked and narrative specificity deliberately suspended.
The compositions transform therapeutic implements into figures that resist closure, encouraging viewers to engage imaginatively rather than interpretively. This withholding allows the objects to function ambiguously. Since they occupy a space between symbolic individual and collective structure, they can reflect the instability of meaning in a shared world.
Extending this visual language into the gallery space, wallpapered elements isolate individual forms scaled up to bodily proportions. These elements shift the encounter from optical distance to physical proximity, reinforcing the sense that the objects operate within a spatial and perceptual system rather than solely within the image.
In Dream State, abstraction functions as a method rather than a style. While the work recalls the experimental strategies of figures such as László Moholy-Nagy and El Lissitzky, its concern lies less with historical reference than with the capacity of abstract form to hold uncertainty. Stahl’s photographs position these objects as sites of reflection that register psychological, social, and political tension.
Lucie Stahl (1977, Germany) lives and works in Vienna, Austria. She had solo exhibitions at Camera Austria, Graz; Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn; Fri Art – Centre d’art de Fribourg, Fribourg; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas; Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne. Her work was included in group exhibitions at Frac Bretagne, Rennes; Musée d‘Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris; Le Magasin, Grenoble; Sculpture Center, New York; Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis; Biennale de Lyon and Berlin Berlinale. She is Professor of Artistic Photography at Kunstuniversität Linz in Austria. In May 2026 she will be part of Lebt und arbeitet in Wien. Contemporary Art from Vienna at the Kunsthalle Wien.