Seven Artists Take the Pew, the Horseshoe and the Car Rim Apart
WAF Galerie Presents AUSGEWEIDET / GUTTED in Vienna
WAF Galerie presents AUSGEWEIDET / GUTTED, curated by Leonie Holtkamp, through October 22, 2026.
Nicole Brandstaetter, Margo Dubovska, Josepha Edbauer, Leonie Holtkamp, Darryl Oswald, Marlene Stahl, Daniel Wendt
AUSGEWEIDET / GUTTED
WAF Galerie
Vienna, Austria
–
Wed to Fri, 3 to 6 pm
Schadekgasse 8, 1060 Vienna
Leonie Holtkamp
WAF Galerie
Courtesy WAF Galerie
Nicole Brandstaetter, Margo Dubovska, Josepha Edbauer, Leonie Holtkamp, Darryl Oswald, Marlene Stahl and Daniel Wendt show at WAF Galerie, Schadekgasse 8 in Vienna, from September 24 to October 22, 2026.
Holtkamp's mobile 1PS hangs horseshoes and a length of horsehair from curved arms, and starts from the folk belief that luck falls out of a horseshoe hung open end down.
Elsewhere a church pew has been fitted with spikes as hostile furniture, a car rim is wrapped in fur, and three hand-poured glycerin soaps carry photographic images of hands that wear away each time the soap is used.
Other works draw on Christian symbolism, family histories and inherited traditions, from Daniel Wendt's ALPHA_OMEGA and Darryl Oswald's archival pieces to Josepha Edbauer's reworked Bavarian ratchet and Margo Dubovska's exploration of remembrance through cowhide and burned wood. Below, curator Leonie Holtkamp explains why the exhibition begins with the act of gutting.
Exhibition Text by Leonie Holtkamp
To gut something—ausweiden—is an act of visceral extraction. It implies removing the interior contents, stripping away protective shells, disemboweling structures of meaning, and laying bare the raw mechanics beneath.
Darryl Oswald, OPTICAL BIOGRAPHY; Daniel Wendt, ALPHA_OMEGA; Marlene Stahl, THE CAR RIMS, "MY DEEPEST CONDOLENCES"; AUSGEWEIDET / GUTTED, installation view through a doorway, WAF Galerie, Vienna, 2026. Photo: WAF Galerie
„ausgeweidet - gutted“ brings together seven artistic positions that interrogate the unearthing of hidden mechanisms, cultural dogmas, and intimate memories. Carried by a somber aesthetic, the show unfolds a continuous gothic undertone that manifests in a reduced and sharpened material language.
The collision of charred wood, cold metals, and animal remains transforms the exhibition space into a kind of modern reliquary in which destruction and preservation seamlessly merge.
Marlene Stahl, (left) THE MERCEDES, A HAND COOKED LIKE A PISTOL; Josepha Edbauer (right), LEFT ME SHATTERING; AUSGEWEIDET / GUTTED, detail view, WAF Galerie, Vienna, 2026. Photo: WAF Galerie.
The use of burned and CNC-milled timber points both to historical rituals of purification and to the fascination of the ruin, while steel components, aluminum rails and car fragments bring a harsh rigidity into the space.
In between, organic materials such as cowhide, horsehair, animal teeth, and rabbit fur form a raw, post-mortem counterweight that questions the interfaces between human, animal, corporeality, and sacrificial ritual. Within this material field of tension, the works subvert religious symbolism and societal architectures of control.
In doing so, ausgeweidet / gutted strips away the protective shell of objects and belief systems, questioning what new meanings emerge from the hollowed-out remains.
by Leonie Holtkamp
Shows SOAP, three hand-poured glycerin soaps with embedded hands that wear away the photographic image with every use. The work draws on Francis Ponge's Le Savon.
Shows LIFE IMITATES DEATH (UNTITLED), a wall work of cowhide in a burned, CNC-milled wooden frame, with laser engraving that refers to photography as a way of preserving memory.
Shows LEFT ME SHATTERING, a sculpture that takes the ratchet, a Bavarian tradition, and turns a tool of exclusion into a weapon of resistance.
Shows 1PS, on the folk myth of the horseshoe, and PEW (HOSTILE FURNITURE-SERIES), which brings hostile architecture into interior space.
Shows OPTICAL BIOGRAPHY and FAMILY ALBUM, works built from found family photographs from the Austrian and Nigerian sides of the artist's family.
Shows works titled THE CAR RIMS, "MY DEEPEST CONDOLENCES", THE MERCEDES and A HAND COOKED LIKE A PISTOL, with excerpts from the text "The highway is not the thousand organs it pours."
Shows ALPHA_OMEGA, which places Christian symbols and rituals such as the crucifix, the halo and the confessional in new contexts.
Works under the name hallohilfe and studies transmedia art under Jakob Lena Knebl. Her projects address interpersonal relationships, the relation of body and space, and the emotional charge of everyday objects.
About Catapult Contemporary
This is an exhibition review published by Catapult Contemporary, an independent editorial platform for contemporary art, based in Vienna. We publish exhibition reviews, artist features, interviews, and critical context, with a focus on emerging and mid-career practices from Europe and beyond.
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