Various offset prints on paper, framed and a pile of magazines
189 x 131 x 6 cm


Produced for an advertising campaign for the Tanzquartier Vienna in 2008/9, under the motto “OPEN UP!,” the individual pages of Haaans were printed and distributed in Viennese newspapers and magazines over the course of two months. Inviting the audience to “go on a research trip” through the collection of the individual pages, Schabus challenges viewers to establish their own relationship with the media representation of the body. Not to be confused with fan collectibles, the individual images interfere with the traditional interpretation of advertising imagery by challenging the convention of a uniform, mediated object. As a whole, the images make up a portrait of the artist’s face that is the same height as his body. As individual pages they are unique: even though the newspapers and magazines received the same graphic files due to variances in printing methods and ink the components result in a heterogeneous media assemblage. – Alicia Reuter


*1970 in Watschig, Austria | Living and working in Vienna, Austria