STUDIO: Johanna Hullár

The artistic work of Johanna Hullár deals with the materiality and surreality of real and artificial objects as well as with the relationship between time and perception. Constructed as a semicircle, the video installation 'If I Could Only Be Sure' creates an immersive spatial situation and encompasses the position of the viewers. The video shows moving and oversized still lifes in close-up. Everyday objects and organic material are shown in different states. Vivid colors, lighting effects and a sound composed especially for the video work together to affect perception. The artist takes up numerous thematic fields of modern art theory, such as disgust or fluidity, and ties in with the art historical tradition of the baroque still life. Through a collage of different, repetitive moments, the impression of a temporal process is created. It is about entropy and the aesthetics of decay. The fragility and transience of life are poetically staged. The installation demonstrates the uncertainty of our cognition towards the nature of the world and its objects. The title of the work is inspired by a song of the same name by Nolan Porter (ABC Records, 1972).

Born in Budapest in 1989, Johanna Hullár first studied photography in Hungary. The work 'If I Could Only Be Sure' was created as the final project of her master's degree in 2020 at the Ecole cantonale d'art de Lausanne (ECAL) in Switzerland and was awarded the ECAL University Prize. Johanna Hullár lives and works in Zurich.

Curated by Dr. Sebastian Baden (Kunsthalle Mannheim), Dr. Alfred Stumm (IFFMH).

The exhibition takes place in cooperation with the International Film Festival Mannheim Heidelberg and is part of the section Facing New Challenges.