Born in Tyrol, Verena Tscherner came to Vienna shortly after graduating from high
school. She studied at the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna (MDW), where she graduated in 2014. Afterwards
she studied at the Friedl Kubelka School, School for Artistic Photography in Vienna, which she graduated in 2019 with a diploma.
Then she studied digital art with Univ.-Prof. Mag.art. Ruth Schnell and UBERMORGEN at the University of Applied Arts,
Vienna, and graduated in June 2024. She lives and works as a freelance artist in Vienna.
During her residency at
AIL Verena Tscherner will produce a new installation for her upcoming exhibition at
Frau*
schafft Raum. She will experiment with different breathing patterns of the deflateables. At the same time Tscherner will
further work with directional speakers and wants to try different texts, voices, atmospherical sounds and music to see how
these sounds may alter the room they are placed in. She will also have her first deflatable inhale.deflate set up at her temporary
studio at AIL. Tscherner is interested to open up a dialogue about contemporary art and how it affects the observer.
Verena Tscherner experiments with the idea of the vacuum as a way to capture a moment, as a delay of decay, as „holding
one‘s breath.“ The aspects of air and vacuum are increasingly gaining new, expanded meanings in her artistic process. inhale.
deflate marked the beginning of her engagement with the genre of sculpture and spatial installation. In her diploma thesis
entangle. deflate she combined 3D-printed objects with a large-scale deflateable and a sound installation. This large-scale
deflateable is sculpturally placed in the space. It takes on an organic character as air is repeatedly added or removed from
it using a timer. Breathing as a connecting element. The individual breathes, the community breathes. In meditation, people
consciously focus on breathing, a process that usually happens unconsciously. The deflateable consciously and unconsciously
soothes the breathing of the viewers. A space for relaxed togetherness can emerge, a space for collective consciousness opens.
The contents are absorbed emotionally and unconsciously into one‘s awareness, to then continue working in the subconscious,
to be reflected upon alone or with others at the right moment. Deflateable, an object is deprived of air to allow it a kind
of „exhale.“ As a result, the objects within begin to move, approaching the viewers, only to withdraw again. The sculpture
is artificially „brought to life“ in order to connect with the viewer through their own empathy. A cycle of tension (vacuuming)
and relaxation (letting go through stopping the vacuuming) emerges, imitating the living in order to turn the viewers‘ gaze
inward. The body itself becomes an individual instrument of insight.
