Moving image is the predominant device Gernot Wieland uses to subtly voice the complexities of living in our secular society. Through scribbly line, grainy film, and plastic forms, Gernot’s works blend various rag-tag fragments into complex, psycho-social narratives.

HALB NACKT, 2023

Departing from his film-based work, Halb Nackt (translated as, Half Naked) is an iterative of narrative, told in English, French and German. Each translation of the text-based series alludes to the ways in which a self is always already more than its bare presence. Through drawing, print and reconstituted sculpture the chapters that compose Halb Nackt each convey a moment in a protagonist’s life; recounting, via scribbly memoir, how a self is fashioned through their experiences and encounters.

“As I see half nakedness as a search for some kind of truth, of something that lies behind the visible, and as you come closer to the truth there are more and more doors which should and can be opened and the search gets more and more complex. And something that one may not even be able to name always remains hidden, so the truth, if one wants to use this metaphor, is never naked, visible, but always half-naked.”

–Gernot Wieland

click for works guide with drawing transcriptions

Turtleneck Phantasies, 2022

Turtleneck Phantasies, 2022, is a poem that comes to us in fragments through video. The author’s life story forms the point of departure for the work. Born in Germany shortly before World War II, he wrote poems and worked as a sailor on a British cargo ship. In the 1980s he was one of only four people to survive a serious shipwreck. Severely traumatised, he was committed to a psychiatric clinic in England for several years and later moved to a home in West Berlin, where he lived until his death. In the homes he began tattooing words and (mostly illegible) texts and drawings on the skin of his fellow patients.

Bird in Italian is Uccello, 2021

Bird in Italian is Uccello, 2021, furthers Gernot’s interest in psychological states and the constitution of belonging in different social contexts. Drawing upon Daphne du Maurier’s short story The Birds, and its subsequent cinematic adaptation, Bird in Italian is Uccello (re)enacts a theatrical production of the horror-thriller. Working specifically with an account of a never performed theatre production of Maurier’s story – one that was meant to be staged at a psychiatric hospital in northern Italy – Gernot’s film inverts the original script’s roles: human characters become birds and the bird protagonists become humans. Deploying Slavoj Zizek’s notion of the ‘real,’ this role reversal not only shakes up ideas of reality, but through Gernot, becomes a way to connect socio-political fear to the migration of birds; conflating social psychology and nature to explore notions of power in turn.

A Perfect Square, 2020

A Perfect Square, 2020, is a three-minute long Super 8 film based on drawings, paintings and potato prints and includes a narration about Kandinsky’s square and doors and houses, consciousness and shapes, and recessive colors.

Ink in Milk, 2018

Ink in Milk, 2018, is a knotted string together of histories, fictions and images. Through the flickering vignettes of a schoolboy trauma, visits to a friend at a psychiatric institution and encounters with animals, Ink in Milk exposes the anxious, web-like structures that underpin the tragicomedy of existence. The artist’s narrative is accompanied by a series of schematic, childlike diagrams, line drawings, ink paintings, plasticine animations, and crystalline sculptural forms, punctuated with super 8 film clips. Sometimes these images illustrate the narrative voice as gathered evidence; at other points they are oblique documents, disrupting chains of causality.

Thievery and Songs, 2016

Lecture-performance recordings

> Depression in Animals, 2019
OGR Turin, 2018

> Past, Present, Present, Past, 2016-date
steirischer herbst, 2019

Drawings and prints

Artist editions

Artist bio

Gernot Wieland (b.1968, Horn, Austria), studied at the Universität der Künste, Berlin and Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Vienna.

Drawing, video, and lecture-performance, these are the predominant devices Gernot uses to subtly voice the complexities of living in our secular society. Through scribbly line, grainy film, and absurd presences, Gernot composes the narratives of his works by blending various rag-tag fragment into complex accounts where the personal alludes to the socio-historic and the socio-historic to the personal.

Recent exhibitions include: Halb Nackt, Belmacz, London, UK (2023); Turtleneck Phantasies, Kindl – Centre for Contemporary Art – M 1 VideoSpace, Berlin, Germany (2022); ECOPOETICS OF GENERIC WORLD, DIVERSEartLA, LA, USA (2022); Transferencia, Kirchner Cultural Center, BIENALSUR, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2021); Quartz Studio, Turin, Italy (2021); Videonale, Festival for Video und Time-Based Art, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Germany (2021); Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland (2020); Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg, Austria (2020); ANIMA – Taiwan International Video Art Exhibition, Hong-Gah Museum, Taipei, Taiwan (2020); The Law is a White Dog, TULCA Festival of Visual Arts, Galway, Ireland (2020); Wait and See, IFFR – International Film Festival, Rotterdam, The Netherlands (2020); Zoo Cosmos, Casa Conti /Ange Leccia Art Center, Oletta, France (2020); 15th IndieLisboa – International Independent Film Festival, Lisbon, Portugal (2020); 12×12, IBB Video Space at Berlinische Galerie, Berlin, Germany (2020); Videoart at Midnight, Berlin, Germany (2020); Risentimento / Ressentiment, Merano Arte, Merano, Italy (2020); Grand Hotel Abyss, Steirischer Herbst Festival, Graz, Austria (2019); Ink and Milk, Belmacz, London, UK (2019,); Vdrome, London, UK (2019); Monitoring, Kasseler Kunstverein, Kassel, Germany (2018); Zeitspuren, Centre d´art Pasquart, Biel, Switzerland (2018); a lecture performance at OGR, Torino, Italy (2018); Shame, Künstlerhaus Bremen, Bremen, Germany (2018), Survival Kit 9, LCCA – Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art, Riga, Latvia (2017); The Museum of Modern Comedy in Art – A Proposal, Projects Art Centre, Dublin, Ireland (2017); MOSTYN Open 20, Llandudno, Wales (2017); 9th Norwegian Sculpture Biennial, Vigeland Museum, Oslo, Norway (2017); 33rd International Short Film Festival, Hamburg, Germany (2017); 34. Kasseler Dokumentar, Film und Videofest, Kassel, Germany (2017).

Gernot’s films have been screened internationally, at festivals such as Videonale, Festival for Video und Time-Based Art, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Germany; IndieLisboa – International Independent Film Festival, Lisbon, Portugal; EMAF – European Media Art Festival, Osnabrück, Germany; VIII Kinodot Experimental Film Festival, St. Petersburg, Russia; Kasseler Dokumentar, Film und Videofest, Kassel, Germany; International Short Film Festival, Hamburg, Germany; Athens Avant-Garde Film Festival, Athens, Greece; International Film Festival in Rotterdam, The Netherlands; Jakarta International Documentary and Experimental Film Festival, Indonesia; Gimli Film Festival, Gimli, Canada; Dobra, Festival de Cinema Experimental, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil.

Gernot has been the recipient of numerous international awards, including the best experimental film under 30 minutes at the German Short Film Awards (2022); the 24th edition of the Festival des Cinémas Différents et Expérimentaux de Paris (2022); the Best Film Award at the VIII Kinodot Experimental Film Festival, St. Petersburg, Russia (2020); the German Film Critics’ EMAF Media Art Award (2019); and the MOSTYN Open (2017).

Gernot lives and works in Berlin.

Press and texts

Ink in Milk | ArtReview exhibition review by Mark Rappolt

On carpets, cats, cages | Art-Agenda review by Barbara Casavecchia

Body Luggage | Artforum review by Prajna Desai

Reference and Experience | Mousse review by Gigiotto Del Vecchio

Gernot Wieland “Thievery and Songs” | Vdrome interview with Zasha Colah

For Hatred of Crystals | text by Oskar Korsár

Gernot Wieland in conversation | interview with Kristina Marberger

Notes on Commentary in the work of Gernot Wieland | text by Maxwell Stephens