MACHINOISERIE at Vienna Art Week
Praterstraße 42/2 courtyard, 1020 Vienna, Austria
24 October- 23 November 2025
Tobias Klein (Hong Kong) and Hong Zeiss (Vienna) complement and contradict each other like microcosm and macrocosm. In their first joint exhibition, CLOUD ROCK comprises nine reimagined Gongshi scholar’s rocks (five Taihu, four Yingde). These computationally dissected works extend the traditional Chinese poetic dichotomy between cloud lightness and rock solidity into a contemporary discourse on Gestell and Cosmao-technics, encounter the veins and grains of Zeiss’s paintings, whose scale and distance – whether near or far – always remain unclear. Although they were not created in exchange, the works examine each other on a structural level and open up dimensions of non-human perception to each other.
The Cloud Rock series are based on found Scholar Rocks. Scholar Rocks are highly sought-after artifacts in Asian culture. In Japanese Culture, suiseki (水石) or in Chinese Gongshi (供石), both have in common that they are found rocks placed in a crafted base. The complementary human craft amplifies the natural beauty of the rocks. Their shapes are the result of millennia of natural erosion and slow transformation juxtaposing the fleeting notion of the man-made artifact. Together their geometrical and narrative complexities form a microcosm for human reflection and interpretation. Cloud Rock I is made from two natural rocks excavated in the Guangzhou region of Southern China.The rock is held in a base that forms around the 3D-scanned rock.The base is a stainless steel, 3D printed using Selective Laser Sintering(SLS). The rock floats above the base, held by a series of tendril-like extensions.
DARK FOREST, a three-panel lenticular triptych. Created from 3D scans of Hong Kong’s wilderness, its imagery fractures into pixelated landscapes via light-refracting lenses. As viewers move,the shifting terrain rejects constructed picturesque traditions to evoke disorientation within digitally constructed nature. Neither documentation nor homage, Dark Forrest serves as an Anthropocene swansong: dense and unyielding, it mourns ecological erosion while celebrating AI-recombinant ecosystems.
The mutual observation of objects and images allows us a rare insight into the exile of the inorganic, into tidal currents and mineral structures, which is actually impossible, if not forbidden, for us. We become secret witnesses to communication processes that elude our understanding of what communication is; that can only be measured in geological eras or beyond time; and whose actual qualities lie beyond meaning and the senses as we know them.