The catalog was developed in close collaboration with the artist. It examines Atkins' practice in the context of contemporary art, literature and digital representation, and explores how the artist uses the displacement of language and script as well as music, voice and sound. Through videos, texts and drawings, the artist develops a multi-layered and deeply figurative discourse. The impossibility of an adequate representation of the physical, especially the corporeal - from computer-generated visual vocabulary to the most hackneyed poetry - is

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

explored to the point of hysteria. At the center of his works is often an unidentified figure, a kind of surrogate for the artist, who is only given life through Atkins' personal performance. The figure finds itself in everyday situations of despair, fear, frustration, but also with room for humor. Atkins is showing a series of new works in this catalog, including "Old Food". In this work, he transports us to a pseudo-historical world of idyllic landscapes and eternal ruin. Figures weep incessantly. There is no redemption in their lives. Crowds of people fall down as the credits roll. Produced exclusively with CGI (computer-generated imagery), everything in this work is understood as a fake, a lie: be it nostalgia, history, progress, authentic life or identity. Kunsthaus Bregenz.

Ed Atkins is an artist who makes videos, writes and draws, developing a complex and deeply figured discourse around definition, wherein the impossibilities for sufficient representations of the physical, specifically corporeal, world - from computer generated imagery to bathetic poetry - are hysterically rehearsed. Atkins' works often centres on an unidentified figure, a kind of surrogate for the artist, who is animated by Atkins' own performance. The figure is to be found in situations of everyday despair, anxiety, frustration and pitch comedy. Atkins transports us to a pseudohistoric world of peasantry, bucolic landscapes and eternal ruin. Characters weep continuously, their lives devoid of dramatic redemption; crowds of people plummet while credits roll; and inedible, impossible sandwiches assemble and collapse in lurid advertisements. Produced exclusively using CGI (computer generated imagery), everything in Atkins' exhibition is understood as fake - nostalgia, history, progress, authentic life, identity.