‘Bottoms Up!’
Featuring works by Martin Guttmann, Julian Göthe, Christina Gruber & Clemens Schneider, Michele di Menna, Fernando Mesquita, Michael Part, Lucia Elena Průša and Marina Sula; curated by Severin Dünser and Olympia Tzortzi
Fluc, Praterstern 5, Vienna
14 March 2018
Social ties are established while drinking, people communicate and interact. The choice of drinks thereby also defines the relation of the participants among each other, while the rituals connected to them force the structure of the way of being together. The artists of the exhibition conceived and appropriated a variety of drinks, respectively formulated instructions on how to use them:
Visitors could lay their hands on Martin Gutmann, trying to find out via thought transfer which artist he was thinking about. If visitors guessed wrong - and that was actually always the case - they had to drink a vodka shot.
Julian Göthe mixed his favorite martini using Noilly Prat Vermouth and Tanqueray Number Ten Gin.
Christina Gruber & Clemens Schneider offered a milkshake and a reflection upon the creeping decline of the idea of the American Dream.
Michele di Menna contributed a drink that she named ‘Cosmic Imbalance’. It consists of two shots in a row: A sweetish whiskey first, then a gherkin water shot.
Fernando Mesquita's contribution was a Portuguese drinking game, the ‘Jogo da moeda’. Each player in the ‘coin game’ can put up to three covered coins on the table - who guesses the total amount of coins is out, who is left at the end has to pay a round.
Michael Part confected a special vodka for the evening, that combined the spirit with the characteristic scent of Chanel's Nr. 5.
Lucia Elena Průša brought cocao from Mexico with her, that she boiled to a hot beverage together with chili, cinnamon and water, which is also drunk like that where the cocoa comes from.
Marina Sula brewed a magic potion using cinnamon, jasmine, grapefruit, rose petals and other ingredients. The love potion was made according to an old recipe and promised that the person who drinks it falls in love with the person who handed it over.
What normally accompanies the communication, became the subject matter in this participative exhibition. In the tradition of relational aesthetics it transformed a conversation piece into a social sculpture – and the other way around.