KULTUMUSEUM Graz
TOHUWABOHU. Silence & Violence (No Museum Has God – Selection Two)

TOHUWABOHU – Chaos is a series of paintings inspired by the Old Testament, created by the renowned Graz architect Eilfried Huth. Few people know that the ninety-six-year-old had also painted throughout his career. The thirty-six paintings, created in 2007, translate stories of violence from the Bible into visual form; they have never been exhibited together. Nearly twenty years later, their themes are more relevant than ever. In the “Fundamentalism” section of No Museum Has God – Selection Two, these works occupy a prominent place in this fall’s exhibition program.

They form a counterpoint to the quiet pictorial interventions by Elisabeth Gschiel, who is also a trained architect. They, too, address violence, yet the artist seeks to subvert it—through the method of sewn images. Gschiel invokes silence, the nearly invisible, and ornamentation. Her stitches are placed alongside holy books and sacred spaces, while her objects are found within that the context of the world’s destruction.