ERDGESCHOSSSNUFFBOX can be read in company branding letters in the entrance area of Galerie Mezzanin. Bernhard Fruehwirth is bringing the gallery down to earth – it was originally on the mezzanine floor and can now be entered directly from Eschenbachgasse.

However, not enough to open a view into the depths since Fruehwirth has covered the floor of the main room of the gallery with mirror panels. The gallery, which used to be open to the street and which has recently been transformed into an enclosed white cube, becomes a snuff box for Bernhard Fruehwirth, a place for dark incidents. In so-called snuff films it is a matter of murder, which is carried out in an apparently real way in order to maximise tension. In the hybrids from documentary, porn and feature films the presentation of violence becomes an authentication strategy.

or Bernhard Fruehwirth the ERDGESCHOSSSNUFFBOX stands for limited scope for action. Frieze-like drawings lined up together enclose the room – they are developed from a stringent tangle of pointed and straight lines which are interrupted, torn, crossed and once again condensed and overlapped in large-format black and white copies. The grid structures, which close ranks as far as impenetrability, reinforce the closed nature of the space. Large picture surfaces appear to open the space above the nervous line meshwork: there are formal elements of the American flag repeating each other in abstracted form, which stand just as much for a window to the outside as insistent penetration into the room.

A further text object is laid above the drawings like an architectonic construction element in the form of a St. Andrew's cross, which appears in the same manner as a sign in the Union Jack. "handmade" and "refuse to work after death" can be read on the cross. With a series of exhibitions, projects and artworks Bernhard Fruehwirth is developing a catalogue of words, terms and combinations of words and letters he assembles which oscillate between literary borrowings, comical abbreviations and pop-cultural slogans. The text pieces mark possible narrations so as instantly to thwart them, and their possible readings similarly lose themselves in the intersecting lines of the drawings. ERDGESCHOSSSNUFFBOX is an installation which does not trust the much-lauded and promising availability of information, knowledge and accessibility.

Eva Maria Stadler