One of the most basic human needs - trust - connects the works of Kareem Lotfy, Evelyn Plaschg, Fabio Santacroce and Anne Schmidt. The exhibition’s title, VERTRAU MIR (Trust me), mediates between trust’s positive dimension, as a friendly invitation, and, on the other hand, its suspicious invasiveness, as a pushy request for granting a leap of faith. The positive aspects of trust develop from it being actively offered and accepted, a process which fosters a sense of interpersonal security. In this way, the negotiation of trust enables and cultivates an invisible contractual cord. Empathy and affection rely on trust and seem impossible without it. But the essence of trust is fragile and can be instrumentalized or abused often too easily. When inverted, trust’s violent dimension enables dependencies and suppression as one of its manifold registers.

The group show VERTRAU MIR is part of the exhibition About the New, Young Scenes in Vienna at Belvedere 21 on view from March 1st until June 2nd 2019.