Editor's note

Ernst Miesgang's artworks often combine the remnants of everyday objects. The artist, for example, destroys kitschy ceramic figures to reassemble them into independent compositions. Or he takes images from newspapers and forms them into new pictorial worlds by repeating and varying individual motifs. In the artist’s highly individual assemblations, the objects become far removed from their original context.Miesgang also works with digital tools to create collages with fragments of existing images of objects and people, developing a new kind of photographic material. He considers himself an image researcher. In his artistic process, which often draws on scientific methods, he is not concerned with the objective representation of reality. Instead, he consciously introduces errors and interventions of non-human actors in his process of image-formation.Much of his work can be read as a satire on scientific models and concepts, criticizing the general faith in progress, speed, and growth of our modern world. In doing so, he proposes a radical paradigm shift - to rethink our value system. His artworks, on which the artist often works for months, can be seen as a plea for slowness, contemplation and reflection. While his unusual perspective on the familiar opens up new spaces for thought and perception and encourages us to sharpen our view of what surrounds us.The artist graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in 2018.The development of technology focuses too much on the interests of a few corporations and lobbyists. Instead, we should use the findings of science and technology to create sustainable and future-oriented systems. However, it can be assumed that this path will also end in a dead end, because even green technologies will not be able to sustainably satisfy the enormous hunger for energy and mobility of our modern world.