Nuances in white

Marianne Lang

04 – 17.10.2022

Exhibition for AYA Estate Vineyards

 Curator: Vessela Nozharova

 

Through the large glass windows of the AYA Estate Vineyards building, currently under construction, light pours in, and with it a landscape of slender rows of vines drawing verticals and horizontals in the distance. Inside the building, the air is different, the light is palpable, it is the main actor in the spectacle of the artwork appearing on the wall.

For days, the artist Marianne Lang engraved a plant that spreads branches and leaves over a wall  of 30 square meters. The leaves and branches are carved into the white wall and each one has its own relief and shape. They flicker under the rays of sunlight, change their form and relief incessantly, sometimes they disappear and become invisible, other times the relief becomes a bas-relief, the lack of form becomes a form in itself.

Marianne Lang (b. 1979) (https://www.mariannelang.at/) is an Austrian artist who developed her characteristic artistic style on the basis of drawing. She paints using various techniques and media, gravure and letterpress printing, pencil and ink drawings, creating site-specific installations. Nature and relationships with architecture and space are among the main themes of her work. The creeping plants, the drawings carved with a chisel into the wall, are some of her most recognizable works. In 2013, they appeared for the first time on the walls inside the Albertina Museum in Vienna. There, ivy takes over the old walls, cutting through several layers of previous paint. This work still stands on the ceiling of the museum restaurant. A drawing making a connection between the architecture of the building and its purpose. An artistic commentary on the history of the place and the traces left in it by art.

Marianne Lang's work is the first artwork to become part of the AYA Estate Vineyards building. It will be followed by other works by Bulgarian and international artists created especially for the new winery. There is something very symbolic in the first artwork in AYA being precisely a plant. The whole idea of the art&wine project is concentrated in the relationship between wine production, art and their harmonious coexistence with nature, which surrounds and is the root of all human efforts in the wine valley.

AYA Estate Vineyards is a winery with its own vineyard in southwestern Bulgaria, on the land of the village of Hersovo. The building that took the place of the hill above the vineyards is the work of architectural group WhAT. The concept of AYA is to combine sustainable wine production, in an architecturally remarkable building, where you can enjoy contemporary art from Bulgaria and the world.