Born in Italy.
Lives and works in Vienna, Austria.
Gelitin comprises the artists Ali Janka, Florian Reither, Tobias Urban, and Wolfgang Gantner, who first met at summer camp in 1978. They formed Gelitin in the mid-1990s in Vienna, Austria, and began exhibiting internationally in 1993.

GELITIN

Characterized by disparate yet unifying backgrounds, Gelitin perform their practice at the fragile crossroads of humor, spontaneity, childlike naiveté, and blatant sexuality, which has given rise to their over-the-top performances and visually enticing work. Anticipating relational aesthetics, Gelitin plays with audience participation and collaboration as a central tenet of their oeuvre. Attitudes become form, and viewers are invited to join in, defying routine behavior while enjoying art from a new perspective.

view all
loader

solo shows

2024
- FOROF, Rome

2023
- Gelatin 2023, Meyer Kainer, Vienna
- Portrait Églomisé, MASSIMODECARLO Pièce Unique, Paris
- Palais Des Études, Beaux-Arts de Paris
- WirWasser, Helmut-Zilk-Park (corner of Gudrunstraße & Sonnwendgasse), Vienna
- Democratic Sculpture 7, The Neubauer Collegium, Chicago
- Democratic Sculpture 7, Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago Architecture Biennial, Chicago
- O'Flaherty's Gelatin O'Flattering, O'Flaherty's, New York

2022
- Alle für Alle, Grundschule an der Waldmeisterstrasse, München
- Impermanent Collection #3.0, Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art of Bergam (GaMeC), Bergman, Italy 
- Gelitin, Belle du Mardi, belle du Mecredi, belle du Jeudi, belle du Vendredi, belle du Samedi, Massimo de Carlo, Paris, France

2021
- Ferdinandeum | Tiroler Landesmuseen, Innsbruck

2019
- Stinking Dawn, Gelitin & Liam Gillick, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, Austria
- Beyond hard, Galerie Meyer Kainer, Vienna, Austria

2018
- Vorm - Fellows - Attitude, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Netherlands

2017
- New York Golem, Greene Naftali, New York, USA
- Pokalypsea - Apokalypse - Okalypseap, »Slight Agitation«, Fondazione Prada, Milan, Italy

2016
- Gelatin, Gelitin, Gelintin, Galerie Perrotin, Hong Kong
- The Guild of Giving (performance), Manifesta 11, Cabaret Voltaire, Zurich, Switzerland
- Gelatin reborn as marlon brando lookalike and ten examples of a romantic portable sculpture, Nicola Von Senger, Zurich, Switzerland
- Schlupfloch Düssilismus, Gelatin und die Deutschen Riesen, Künstlerverein Malkasten, Düsseldorf, Germany
- Gelitin, KlitClique, Elikuka und Anus Riot, KARAOKEMACHINE - partizipativer sing a long your song guten abend, Donaufestival, Krems, Autriche

2015
- Prosopopoeia, Massimo de Carlo, London, United Kingdom
- Hanging on l'inform perdu, Téléphone, Hotel Kristiania, Lech, Austria

2014
- Abscess, Rectum, Septum, Cave, Puerto Rico
- Die Tusovka Runde, Solyanka VPA, Moscow, Russia
- The Wachauer Nose (public sculpture), St. Lorenz, Austria
- Buco, Massimo De Carlo, Milan, Italy
- Die Winter Show, Meyer Kainer, Vienna, Austria
- Von einem Freund - Gedichte zum Auswendiglernen, Secession, Vienna, Austria
- Paint Me Paint Me Everywhere, Bunkier Sztuki, Krakow, Poland

2013
- Loch, 21er Haus, Museum of Contemporary Art, Vienna
- you you and w, Tim Van Laere Gallery, Antwerp
- Ritratto Analitico, Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Teatro Arsenale, Milan, Italy
- Stop - Anna Ly Sing, Schinkel Pavillion, Berlin, Germany
- "Nob" (with Sarah Lucas), Secession, Vienna, Austria

2012
- Gelatin - Gelitin, Greene Naftali Gallery, New York
- The voulez vous chaud, Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Paris, France
- Kühlschrank, Bett, Tastatur, Rossmarkt, Frankfurt a.M., Germany
- Nasensuche, Schloss Rossatz, Wachau, Austria
- Ephemeropterae XV+, TBA21 - Augarten, Vienna, Austria
- The Fall Show, Greene Naftali Gallery, New York, USA
- Buffalo Sculptures, Decade : Contemporary Collections 2002-2012, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, USA

2011
- Lucas Bosch Gelatin (together with Sarah Lucas), Kunsthalle Krems, Austria
- Puttana Cadente, Temporary Gallery, Cologne, Germany
- Andreas Schlaegel and Gelitin - Come early to avoid disappointment, T-B A21, Vienna, Austria
- Mode statt Hode - Gelatin defiliert Modeklasse Bernhard Wilhelm, Galerie Meyer Kainer, Vienna, Austria

2010    
- Frohes Fest, Belvedere, Vienna, Austria
- All Together Now, Tim Van Laere Gallery, Antwerp, Belgium
- One is too much and a hundred are not enough, Carlson Gallery, London, United Kingdom
- Blind Sculpture, Greene Naftali Gallery, New York, USA

2009
- Palais Keiner Mayer, Galerie Meyer Kainer, Vienna, Austria
- Klunk Garden, Tomio Koyama Gallery, Tokyo, Japan
- All or the just - I 120 minuti di Torino, Teatro Regio, Turin, Italy
- Boring Island, Mossutställningar, Stockholm, Skärgård, Sweden

2008
- La Louvre - Paris, Musée d'Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris
- Egger Grubisic Quehenberger, Kunstraum Innsbruck, Austria

2007
- The Dig Cunt, Six Actions for New York City, Creative Time, New York
- Blümchen, Galerie Schloss Damtschach, Carinthia, Austria
- Das Kakabet, Galerie Nicola von Senger, Zurich, Switzerland
- Die Künstlerinnen sind anwesend, Galerie Meyer Kainer, Vienna

2006
- Hugris, Kling & Bang Galleri, Reykjavik, Iceland
- Strozzi Pappolozzi, Galleria Massimo de Carlo, Milan, Italy
- Chinese Synthese Leberkäse, Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria

2005
- Hase / Rabbit / Coniglio, Artesina, Italy
- Tantamounter 24/7, Leo Koenig, Inc., New York
- Sweatwat, Gagosian Gallery, London
- Les innocents aux pieds sales, Galerie Perrotin, Paris
- Xeavy, X Wohnungen, Hebbel am Ufer, Märkisches Viertel, Berlin

2004
- Möbelsalon Käsekrainer, Galerie Meyer Kainer, Vienna
- Otto Volante, Galleria Massimo de Carlo, Milan, Italy
- Nasser Klumpatsch, Institute of Contemporary Art, Sofia, Bulgaria

2003
- Arc de Triomphe, Salzburger Festspiele, Rupertinum, Salzburg, Austria
- Gelatin Institut, Leo Koenig Inc., New York, New York
- Gelatin at the Shore of Lake Pipi Kacka, Frieze Art Fair, London
- Golden Shower, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt a. M., Germany
    
2002
- Le Cadeau, Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Paris
- Flaschomat, Kunsthalle St. Gallen, Switzerland
- Grand Marquis, Ars Futura Galerie, Zurich, Switzerland
- Armpit, Liverpool Biennale, Liverpool, UK
- Die Schlotze, Berliner Festwochen, Pallaseum, Berlin

2001
- Gelatin Is Getting It All Wrong Again, Leo Koenig Gallery, New York
- Schlund, Marstall, Munich, Germany

2000
- Der traurige Turm, Max Mobil Sendemast, Krems, Austria
- The B-Thing, World Trade Center, New York
- Schlürfbrunnen, Staatz, Austria
- Buttik Transportør, Galerie Meyer Kainer, Vienna

1999
- !Que guapo!, La Panaderia, Mexico City, Mexico
- Gelatin Ship Paprika, Bishopsgate Goodsyard, London
- Human Elevator, Mackie Appartment, Los Angeles
- Breakfast in Bed, Austrian Cultural Institute, London

1998
- Percutaneous Delights, P.S.1, New York
- Suck and Blow, Spencer Brownstone Gallery, New York

1997
- Lock Sequence Activated, Kunstbüro, Vienna
- Gelatin‘s Little Spanking Show, Flex, Vienna 1997
- Association of Anonymous Astronauts, Public Netbase, Vienna
- Fresh Meat, Not Coffee Studio, New York
- Sea of Madness, Maria Loretto, Carinthia / Kopszigat-Duna, Budapest / Forum Stadtpark, Graz / Kunsthaus Glarus, Switzerland
    
1996
- unterdruck – low pressure, Kunstzeitraum, St. Moritz, Switzerland

1995
- GC Ballina International, Galerie Station 3, Vienna

group shows

2024
- The Beauty of Diversity, Albertina Modern, Vienna
- Shine On, Sadie Coles HQ, London

2023
- Hard/Soft, MAK – Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna
- We Love, Heidi Horten Collection, Vienna
- Main Exhibition, Kyiv Biennial, Augarten Contemporary, Vienna
- Körper und Territorium, Kunsthaus Graz
- ΔΕΚΑ, K-Gold Temporary Gallery, Agia Paraskevi, Greece

2022
- The Fest, MAK – Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna
- Body And Territory, Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb 

2020
- Bodylotion, Zeller von Almsick, Vienna, Austria

2019
- The Tip of the Iceberg«, Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria
- Live Forever, Tim Van Laere Gallery, Antwerp, Belgium
- There is no clock in the forest, Galerie Schloß Damtschach, Wernberg, Austria
- Ich bin alles zugleich - Selbstdarstellung von Schiele bis heute, Landesgalerie Niederösterreich, Krems, Austria
- The Last Waltz (For Leon), Tim Van Laere Gallery, Antwerp, Belgium

2018
- Knock Knock, South London Gallery, London, UK
- Experience Traps, Middelheim Museum, Antwerp, Belgium
- Optik Schröder II, Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna, Austria
- Always Trust The Artist, Tim Van Laere Gallery, Antwerp, Belgium

2017
- How To Live Together, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, Austria

2016
- SELF — Pawel Althamer, Steven Claydon, Dan Colen, Gelitin, Loie
- Hollowell, Rashid Johnson, Bertrand Lavier, Tony Lewis, Liu Xiaodong, Matthew Monahan, Rob Pruitt, Pietro Roccasalva, Josh Smith, Kaari Upson, Yan Pei-Ming, Anicka Yi, Zhao Gang, Jamian Juliano-Villani, Andra Ursuta«, Massimo De Carlo, London
- Home Improvements, Curated by John Waters / FraenkelLAB, Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco
- Zeichnung in den Raum, Traklhaus, Salzburg, Austria

2015
- The Avant-Garde Won’t Give Up: Cobra and Its Legacy, Curated by Alison M. Gingeras, Blum & Poe, Los Angeles
- I dropped the Lemon Tart, Lisa Cooley Gallery, New York
- Gelatin, Franz Graf, Markus Schinwald, KAI 10, Arthena Foundation, Düsseldorf, Germany
- Franz Gertsch. Johanna & Co. feat. Andy Warhol, Museum Franz Gertsch, Burgdorf, Switzerland
- Punk. Its Traces In Contemporary Art, CA2M - Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, Madrid, Spain
- Tribute to Flux Labyrinth (1976/2015), Frieze Projects New York, Frieze Art Fair New York
- Das Unbekannte Meisterwerk, Galerie Meyer Kainer, Vienna, Austria
- Picasso in Contemporary Art, Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio
- Du dessin dans l’espace, Musee D'Art Moderne et Contemporain, Saint-Etienne Metropole
- Picasso in der Kunst der Gegenwart, Deichtorhallen, Hamburg

2014
- 24-hour opening of the Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, USA
- Chat Jet (Part 2) Skulptur in Reflexion, Künstlerhaus Graz, Austria
- Girl, curated by Pharrell Williams, Galerie Perrotin, Paris, France
- Blue Print, KAdD, Amersfoort, Netherlands

2013
- Happy Birthday Galerie Perrotin / 25 ans, Tripostal, Lille, France
- Das schwache Geschlecht - Neue Mannsbilder in der Kunst, Kunstmuseum Bern, Switzerland
- Boltensternraum Baden, Baden, Austria

2012
- Franz West & Gelatin: Zwei Epiphanien - Gooooong, Schloss Damtschach, Carinthia
Skyscraper: Art and Architecture Against Gravity, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
- Les maîtres du désordre, Musée du quai Branly, Paris
- Relocated, Galerie Neu, Berlin
- Utopie Gesamtkunstwerk, 21er Haus, Vienna
- Zwei Epiphanien,Schloss Damtschach, Carynthia, Austria
- Die Sammlung #2, 21er Haus, Vienna, Austria

2011
- Some Like it Hot, Gelatin Pavilion, Biennale di Venezia, Venice
- Reflecting Reality, Sigmund Freud Museum, Vienna
- The Luxury of Dirt, Galerie Bob van Oursow, Zurich
- Alpine Desire, Austrian Cultural Forum, New York

2010
- When not, then yes (You go, I stay), Aichi Triennale, Nagoya City Art Museum, Japan
- Hareng Saur: James Ensor en de hedendaagse kunst, S.M.A.K., Gent, Belgium
- The New Décor, Hayward Gallery, London / Garage CCC, Moscow
- Dorm, The Model, Sligo, Ireland
- Cosas que solo un artista puede hacer / Things that only an artist can do, MARCO, Vigo, Spain

2009
- The PIG Presents: Jim Drain, Paul Chan, Jeff Koons, Mario Grubisic, Paola Pivi, Gelatin,
- Simon Martin, Roberto Cuoghi, Deitch Projects, New York
- Precarious Form I, Galerie Meyer Kainer, Vienna
- Anzengruber Biennale, Café Anzengruber, Vienna
- Mapping the Studio – Artists from the Francois Pinault Collection, Palazzo Grassi, Venice, Italy
- Best of Austria. Eine Kunstsammlung, Lentos Museum, Linz, Austria
    
2008
- Stellungswechsel 500, »Hamsterwheel«, Malmö Konsthall, Malmö, Sweden
- The PIG Presents: 7 solo shows by Alfredo Jaar, Mario Grubisic, Paola Pivi, Gelitin, Jeremy Deller, Simon Martin, Roberto Cuoghi, Galerie Perrotin, Miami
- Normally, Proceeding and Unrestricted With Without Title, »PsychoBuildings – Artists Take On Architecture«, Hayward Gallery, London
- Pretty Ugly, Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York
- Painting Now and Forever Part II, Matthew Marks Gallery and Greene Naftali, New York
   
2007
- Stellungswechsel 500, »Hamsterwheel«, Centre d’Art Santa Mónica, Barcelona, Spain / Le Printemps de Septembre, Toulouse, France / Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy
Fuori Uso, Agency for Contemporary Art Exchange, Budapest, Hungary / Galleria Noua, Bucarest, Romania
- Franz West: Soufflé – eine Massenausstellung, Kunstraum Innsbruck, Austria
- Mutatis, mutandis – Extraits de la Collection Antoine de Galbert, La Maison Rouge, Paris

2006
- In den Alpen, Kunsthaus Zürich, Zurich, Switzerland
- Akademie. Von der Kunst lernen, Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst, Antwerp, Belgium
- Bilder zum Fürchten, Gemäldegalerie der Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Vienna
- Nothing But Pleasure, Bawag Foundation, Vienna
- Mozart. Experiment und Aufklärung, Albertina, Vienna
- Fuori Uso, Ex Mercato Ortofrutticolo, Pescara, Italy
- Qu’ils mangent de la brioche, Galerie Perrotin, Paris

2005
- Zapf de Pipi, 1st Moskow Biennale of Contemporary Art, Lenin Museum, Moskow
- Skulptur für einen Flughafen, Bilder hauen – Skulpturen bauen, Zoom Kindermuseum, Vienna
- Dionysiac, Centre Pompidou, Paris
- Joy, Casino Luxembourg, Luxemburg

2004
- No Money, Kunsthalle Kiel, Kiel, Germany
- The Yugoslav Biennal of Young Artists, Vrsac, Serbia

2003
- Im Arsch des Elefanten steckt ein Diamant, »Auf eigene Gefahr«, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, Germany
- Extra, Swiss Institute Contemporary Art, New York

2002
- True Love IV, Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju, Korea
- Win Win, Shanghai Biennale, Shanghai, China
- Wald und Explosionen, Helmhaus, Zurich, Switzerland

2001
- Stephan with ph please!, Art in General on Canal, New York
- Die totale Osmose, Biennale di Venezia, Austrian Pavilion, Venice, Italy
- Schlammloch, Sonsbeek 9, Arnheim, Netherlands
- Furball, Playing amongst the ruins, Royal College of Art, London

2000
- Weltwunder, In Between, EXPO 2000, Hanover, Germany
- Kolibri d’amour, Aller Anfang ist Merz, Sprengel Museum, Hanover, Germany
- A Hole to China, Awesome Festival, Perth, Western Australia
- Lebt und arbeitet in Wien, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna

1999
- Hugbox, Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool, UK
- Human Elevator, Mackie Appartment, Los Angeles
- Operation Lila, New Hospital, Meran, Italy
- Pollo Feliz, Wahlverwandschaften, Wiener Festwochen, Sophiensäle, Vienna

1997
- Sea of Madness, Overdub, Kunsthaus Glarus, Switzerland

1996
- Ing. Herbert Hübner, Junge Szene ’96, Secession, Vienna
- Pronoia in Exnerland, Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienna
- 20228 – 0000042945, Coming up, Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, 20er Haus, Vienna

public collections

- Belvedere, Vienna, Austria
- Mumok, VIenna Austria,
- T-B A 21, Vienna, Austria
- City of Vienna, Austria
- Land Niederösterreich
- Essl Museum, Klosterbneuburg, Austria
- Lentos Kunstmuseum, Linz, Austria
- Museum der Moderne, Salzburg, Austria
- François Pinault Foundation, Venice, Italy
- Sammlung Falkenberg, Hamburg, Germany
- Sammlung Spallart, Fotoraum, Vienna, Austria
- Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France
- Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris, France
- Fondation Antoine de Galbert, La Maison Rouge, Paris, France
- Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature, Paris, France
- Shalom Tower
- Mona, Tasmania

  • May 30, 2023
    Der Standard — 1 PAGE

  • January 28, 2022
    Temple magazine — 4 PAGES

  • August 1, 2021
    Kunstforum — 4 PAGES

  • October 24, 2018
    Office magazine — 2 PAGES

  • June 7, 2018
    The New York Times — 6 PAGES

The Presence of Holes

by Gianni Helzer

Sometimes I look it up on-line: In .42 seconds, Google delivers 321,000 images relating to the search term “Loch” (hole). From rabbits named Loch to the Loch Ness Monster. These days there’s an image for anything and everything. The earth, and a good portion of the universe, is captured in pictures. From the largest to the smallest; the most compelling to the most banal. From the Milky Way to the first of the cow’s four stomachs; from Venus to Vulva. Most of these images are hollow—perhaps showing something, yet signifying nothing.

It’s no wonder that a media manipulated and overwhelmed population is so apprehensive about unsent and unarchived mysteries of humanity. The phenomena that almost no-one can attest to, that nevertheless lend themselves to a broader description and an ongoing story. The myths, archetypes and symbols; the few remaining black holes that, in the realm of the media establishment, come from a place where nobody can send to or receive from, yet are meaningful despite, or rather precisely because of this distinction.
Geletin reaches these places.

For the majority of visitors to the World’s Fair, the “Weltwunder,” (Wonder of the World), was nothing but a water hole on a green field. An unsolved riddle remained as to why people could disappear within for so long. For the few who actually immersed themselves the result was a visceral euphoria for which there will never be a picture except for the blissful feeling of physical well-being. There are other such Geletin installations, that, through a mixture of uncertainty and satisfaction, (together with the so-called “G-Protein” which, incidentally, plays an important role), produce a longing for adventure free of the conventions of a mediated reader. A personally nuanced “Wonder of the World,” forever etched in memory, is thus created.

Holes and gorges are ubiquitous in the work of Geletin. A hole as meeting place is also the elastic intestine of the host in “Das Doppelte Faustchen”, (The Double Hidden Laugh). A warm, fragile cavity, bequeathing both security and desire. The three protagonists are deliciously vulnerable in their exploration of this hollow space, creating an eerie and lurid presence.

As society’s last tabood orifice, the anus merits particular attention in Geletin’s work.
They have shown it the most beautiful reverence in Bregenz with the work “Kacksaal,” (Shithall). With a pendulous step one mounts the wooden hut, sits on the table apparatus with reflecting toilet, and grabbing binoculars, marvels at the sightlines of ones own anus. As upon glimpsing Venus at the observatory, one is inevitably drawn to philosophize. At a symposium, Paolo Pivi authoritatively expressed this impressive experience with the following question: “Would you like to die without having seen your own asshole?”

PS I first became acquainted with Gelitin at a communal, night-time bath in a mud-hole in Arnhem.


Dead Feet Fragrance

by Tex Rubinowitz

In 1980 Joseph Beuys exhibited a selection from his work complex Wirtschaftswerte in the Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst in Ghent - on rickety iron shelves the shaman with hat draped basic Foodstuffs and articles of daily use from the GDR, the state which had decided to abolish money by 1980. Fishcakes, margarine, pectoral and throat teas, Schneehasen cigars, a scrubbing powder by the name of Quasi, and a couple of sachets of gelatin, everything in plain, unadorned uniform packaging holding out no promises whatsoever, while behind the shelves hung 6 opulent oil paintings from the 19th century, and so from the era of Karl Marx. The message is easy to understand for every moron,
utopia curdles into a rancid everyday life out of which all hope has been drained, like a limp balloon, out of a claim the truth has come to light, and it is gray. Gray is not a color; all cats are gray by night. Visitors to the exhibition soon noticed that something else existed besides the installation, a peculiar odor. The odor of real existing socialism, this typical fug, Wofasept, East Germany's one and only disinfection agent, shadows conjunctivitiscausing
brown coal covering the crouched cities, and the fumes of rattling motors from cardboard
cars. An olfactory exhibition of wretchedness, given equal footing with retinal art, art which only reaches the retina. As on February 29 2008, the day that exists only every 4 years, the artist group Gelitin opened their monumental show La Louvre Paris at the Musée d'Art moderne de Ia Ville de Paris in, surprise: Paris, it was closer to Beuys than the spiffy poster would lead viewers to expect, showing the naked four imitating together Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending staircase, No 2 from 1912. Duchamp called his brief foray into Cubism "elementary parallelism", his attempt to transform an unmoving image into a seemingly moving image, here already the search for a fourth dimension which, without perhaps connoting it in this way, the Gelitins were to achieve 96 years later, via the Beuysian detour 28 years before them. Over the whole exhibition encompassing 3000
single objects, and so more resembling the material input of attritional warfare, hung a as heavy a odor as at Beuys' Wirtschaftswerte, at times reeking more of cheese, then at others of caramel, and the sources were quickly identified, a gigantic cheesefoot
carved and molded out of all possible types of cheese, which stoically reeked away, and in another hall plywood boards doused with molasses, all of the floor sticky, as if one's own shadow had no inclination to get up from the floor. Swathes of vapors from both odors ran into one another here and there, and blended into a third, which caused one Norwegian to become a little restless, for it reminded him of his beloved sugary-sweet, sticky goat's milk cheese in the tube, called Gjetost. In the Front then the odor, and on the walls, here too the Beuys parallel, a host of relief-like Mona Lisas out of plasticine. It is these coincidences, not conservable, and olfactory fourth dimensions which hold everything together, Duchamp, Beuys and the tinker boys of Gelitin, their shadows form the overlaps through which we, the astonished viewers, romp in their exhibitions. Inscribed on Duchamp's headstone are the words "D’ailleurs, c’est toujours les autres, qui meurent” ("It is always other people who die"). This should have been on the entrance ticket to the grand Gelitin wingding: not a single Foot needs to perish for this exhibition.

Tex Rubinowitz, Vienna, January 2011


La Louvre is Home

by Francesco Stocchi

"La Louvre is home" this is what Günther keeps on thinking out-loud while nailing, loading, screwing and unscrewing. He wears a vintage red-jump suit. Next to him Schuyler wears the same, only in perfect pink. He thinks opposite to Günther,
but somebody they agree and find each other in the same harmony. In proximity Ali's black salopettes imposes a strange black that doesn't absorbs, rather emanates light. Beside him Frikki stands with no salopettes, nor pants at all: too tight, too colored, too
much uniform and too many questions. The group, or "Gelitin 's professional entourage", moved into the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris a few days ago,
but it is as they have lived there forever. Everything in the surroundings seems familiar, something seen before although new, as the place was magically
modeled in harmony to the newcomers and not the other way around. I felt the same when I first arrived in December, three months before the exhibition. Gelitin was already working on site for La Louvre in a former piano bar in Parisian's eastend "Montreuil". It was abandoned but looked lively and welcoming, fully accessorized but far from being swanky. A place that quickly acquired a personality, a character that apartments absorb only after some months you live in. Gelitin had just moved there and it was already so gelatinesque. How can this be possible? How can they always play home? Are they happy campers, or?!'! Again, too many questions. Thinking of Gelitin questions come naturally. fly around, so let's not try to stop them and raise as many (pertinent?) questions
come to mind.

I believe the query revolves around the following : Many questions gravitate around Gelitin, lots of demand for whys and clarifications. One wants to
understand, to analyze, motivate and receive explanations, when it would be enough just to see and propagate. The hunger for exhaustive understandings expressed by means of questions is not deviating in itself. or because everything that spins
around Gelitin is a non-sense to which it is not possible to give a reason. All this need for clarification will always find an answer but it will always be the simple answer, the most truthful and the most disarming too. So simple that one may not have
thought about it. One of the most precious lessons I received in the time I shared with Gelitin is how things are truly intelligible in their nature. It is just about the way you face them. When one raises a question, the answer is immediate and spontaneous, charged with wise obviousness. The motivations that generate the consequent actions are basic and generally we are the creators of the problems we further face. In the same cord, we should disturb the well-known, maybe overexploited,
Buddha's concept that goes more or less like this : ,There is no way to happiness, happiness is the way".

I observe Florian and find him deeply concentrated, fully immersed into a plastine painting. The kitsch colored elegance he's wearing melts with the work he is bent on. He seems very careful the way he looks at it and how he reshapes the polychromatic miniatures, but at the same time the action is smooth and spontaneous. I come closer with the purpose to participate, but my first intention is slowed by the thoughts, trying to find the code behind the action: « Don't think Francesco. Don't think!" he vigorously says, as this was the supreme first and last rule to follow. This seems obvious but so hard at the same time. At first I couldn't find the relation between his words and the concentration he embodied. It is a whole, there is no difference, as there is no distinction between his Art and his Life. They share the same paradigms.

All of them and more, including the people surrounding Gelitin, have made a commitment for life. They have chosen to take a specific direction, the unstable, maybe thrilling, definitely not the boring one. Some might define it as "freedom" but it is not about being or not being "free". It is more about not queuing for hours on the way to the beach for the weekend. The results are in direct reaction to the procedure chosen. A domino effect. Art is at the same time as inseparable to their lives as their working practice is inextricable to the common, sometimes meaningless daily actions. We don't know whether the structures built in the show will become works of art or will just remain functional structures. Maybe both. The caramel, the trousers, the cheese, the wooden ashtray, the chairs, the collages are a unicum. It's real and it is exactly what you see. No special effects. Nothing or anyone claims to be different from what it seems. This commitment springs out from a necessary self-provocation that is mirrored in their creativity. One big omelet. An organized mobocracy where chance stops being chance, in close relation between the banal, the killed and the impossible, the stereotyped, the brut and the whiz-bang.
Where did Gelitin come from and where are they going? What are they comparable to? They're on a different trip. So how do we define a prototype.They are like a bar soap, hard to grasp. Just as their name, impossible to categorize: morphing but truthfully the same. Their appellation changes and I think it will again and again, but this doesn't really matter. But why? Probably the answer would be, if it sounds good, why not?". Gelitin is not a definition, neither a brand.
They can be really annoying to a certain entourage or to a certain way of thinking, but you can't actually point your finger against them or crystallize controversy: Gelitin are not provocateurs, their actions don't bring any judgments against, they rather embrace the environment where they appear. Therefore the notion of public evanishes, there are only participants who, through the simple act of doing, surprise themselves, without necessarily intending to provoke. You embrace Gelitin's scenario and thinking method through the act of the experience. It is not by starring at them, that you might fulfill your comprehension. Through the collective, anonymous participation, one's get the momentum; by looking at people joining Gelatin, rather than dissecting Gelatin's behaviours. Although the whole scenario seems theatrical or even more, carnevalesque, they are not playing a character: their expression of intimate truth is a hint on how radical Gelitin are. Compromises are amiably rejected with clear and rightful arguments that defend the integrity of their vision. In fact, I've always found compromises acutely undemocratic.
The main body of work seems to be achieved in the team's selection. Once the team is ready, everything magically follows the path. The ones around Gelitin are not just "around Gelitin", but they represent an integral part to the project. Each one is a character and each one brings an important section to the final shape. This develops naturally, one can be himself without the intention to act as Gelitin or behave more eccentrically than what he genuinely might be. During the preparation process
a show takes place, where a self-built and highly efficient organized anarchy is established. Each one operates within an open, transparent process. All together the group carries on an energy and with it creates an atmosphere around it that survives beyond their absence. The "home" won't be dismantled, it's just that its first inhabitants will leave it to the newcomers. Gelitin is about creating an ambiance platform, whether the results might be durable or ephemeral, this comes on a
second note. lmprovisation is a crucial ingredient which can be used everywhere and eventually with nothing. As Tobias says, "improvisation is alive, you always carry it around". And this aliveness generates pure creation. It is always about the birth of
new images there to paraphrase long-established myths or symbols of popular culture. Their practice is applied to the addition of meanings, offered to personal experiences connections. By means of this kaleidoscopic visual addition, layered on top of unmemorable countless meanings, I tend to demythologize the icons that are surged as models. Le Musée du Louvre doesn't seem so distant after-all. Adding more content but not accumulating, things move or change before time takes hold of them. A considerable part of what constitutes the show ends with it, being transient just as some actions that accompany it. Next time everything will start again and in the new same common-authorship way. One cannot distinguish who did that sculpture or that plastiline, and in the end it doesn't really matter. It is this extended group which prevails on the individual giving a colored shadow to the surrounding atmosphere.

For the show La Louvre in Paris, they open up a huge space that anybody can enrich. An expanded field where visitors can freely operate, sharing the same mental process. The museum is seen as a place filled with objects where to spend some time, an alive place named from its Latin from Greek etymology mouseion, « seat of the Muses". For the sake of the visitors' comfort, you have Cristoph working on a chair then on other objects that might be described as "archeology of the future" or belonging to an uncertain time. Will these objects take part of the show or he is building up a chair to get some rest? Maybe the latter, probably both. Wolfgang
might take over the construction together with Hubert in a speechless agreement. More repairing than restoring and Paris is also about restoring if we think at the nineteenth century's city expansion. A city where things seem kept apart, saved, rediscovered and put on pedestals. The approach to La Louvre is simple, simple that doesn't always goes with easy. Gelitin does not proceed by metaphors, they are rather direct, filling their message with an efficient and hard to learn tool: humor. For example Gelitin's presentation of gender-differences. How do they manage to face rooted cultural conventions? A recurrent procedure is to expose nudity in everyday context. Power is embodied and defined by the image, so presenting a divest situation balances these codified power-structures. Being pure and simple nudity, just as their work, nothing seems gross, rather playful with dramatic mèches. A nudity far from being porn, where nudity is worn as a costume. Gelitin adapt the environment they live in and show themselves in vulnerable situations, stripped, playing with embarrassment: same circumstances we have to deal with just as everyone else. The top dressing is joyfulness that may transform in tragicomic. But never a joke. The whole is developed in such a straightforwardness that self-identification is a rather common reaction. Behind this spontaneous masquerade, the act seems very solemn, as humor is a really serious and effective demarche.
What is not recurrent but rather newfangled is La Louvre, where former works are shown together with unknown pieces that could either be early or made on site. We don't know, masterpieces and gimcracks are amalgamated. The main, monumental works that structure the paths of the visitor are built from the leftovers of the former ARC show by Mathieu Mercier. They exemplify classical forms, though their nature is exceedingly ephemeral and are bound to disappear with the exhibition. That is the destiny of caramel (where I see the act of pouring liquid as occasional libation) or cheesemade structures: ruins that with time will embrace the scenery, as the collapsed columns of Olympia. In the background, hardons in the desert landscape. If copying is not to merely reproduce, rather to activate a movement, I see in La Louvre Paris constant, recurring totemic qualities that gelatinize my common knowledge, or grangerize the book of Art History. What may be seen as ersatz, imitations, are actually translations of contemporary facts or classical myths, which make Paris Hilton's Mona Lisa sitting next to a grotesque, uncanny rendition of the Female-portrait's icon. Closer to Basquiat's version than to Warlhol's. Is writing a poem with images of excrements an unmoral act? It's quest to demystify vvhat stands behind impervious barriers. When I walk through the halls of the Musée, I'm immerged into the reconstruction of the museum inside of a museum. The opposite of a tautological demarche which demonstrates how the idea behind of the copy activates a whole different system. You cannot be a philomath when entering into La Louvre; it is not about learning rather feeling to be part of. The show doesn't claim to aver. By walking through the different rooms, there are no nimbus of lights that radiate the surroundings, no specific points where attention should be focused. It's a magnificent overall, a lively, genuine atmosphere. You see big keys carried around visitors' necks, it's the cloakroom functioning as introduction to the museum's functional structures that are turned in Gelatin 's specimens: a introspective bathroom, an Olympic publication (coming out every four years), a vertical bookstore, peluches in spirits jars, multimemories chairs and sofas, barefoot guided tours . . .
All the familiar principles belonging to the museum are catalyzed inside the exhibition and garnished by a vibrating aura. This aliveness comes from dusting out the idées reçues that surrounds us and reveal the radiant essence of our life as it has never been seen so clear and flamboyant. The life of our city is rich in poetic and marvelous subjects. We are enveloped and steeped as though in an atmosphere of the marvelous ; but we do not notice it. Gelitin do.



Galettene: Cake or Sex or All Three. The true story of Gelitin

by Liam Gillick

Artists who work together benefit from the creation of the semi-autonomous grouping. Coming together creates some ability to counter the stresses that are the result of excessive projections and expectations. Some artist groupings lack individual identities — that’s the point — they are collective and submit to the overall aims of working together. Gelitin neither avoid stress nor have those involved become completely subsumed within the collective. They posit a role that functions between the overt assertion of individual identity and the evasive potential of the group.
It was all so different in the beginning. A story of fights, arguments and a final resolution that saw half of the original Galettene [sic] — named after the famous Galette de Rois, or King Cake — leave for a communal life in the Dordogne region of France. The four abandoned youngest members moved back to Vienna — where they renamed themselves Gelatin (later Gelitin) — in mockery of their former partners. From the mid-’90s onwards little has been heard of the reclusive French group, while their Viennese protégés have subsequently swamped us with an excess of collective libido, corrupted critique and consistent exceptionalism.
It was the puff pastry outer layers of the King Cake that first inspired the eight-strong arts collective Galettene in the ’80s. They believed that art functions like that. It merely creates layers on top of a sickly corrupted culture. The almond frangipane filling — so condensed and sweet — somehow stood in for the lure of a uniquely Austrian cake-based gemütlichkeit. For them, society’s problems were not poverty, hypocrisy or repression but a belief that modern European culture is too easy, too seductive. Galettene’s methods were simple: to make people happy and stressed simultaneously. Their techniques were virtually invisible. They inserted themselves into the daily life of the Austrian provinces and produced high-quality eco-products — primarily cakes and bread — in order to reveal the critical potential of an endless search for quality. It was their contention that this raising of quality through the production of baked goods with a particular appeal to the educated classes would lead to increased desire for more quality — a rejection of the mass-produced and an eventual collapse of capitalism. It would be a slow process. And in the best tradition of the Left, the process mainly involved critiquing and undermining others involved in the new food consciousness. Their one achievement was the plotting of the Austrian white wine Diethylene Glycol (antifreeze) scandal in 1985, which led to a new eco-consciousness in relation to future Austrian wine production.
This critique of eco-consciousness via food production was carefully documented by art student and early Galettene member Ali Janka — then working as an apprentice in a photo lab in Neuhofen an der Krems, just south of Linz. He let the older founders of the group process their films for free — conveniently handing over the printed photographs right in front of his bosses, pocketing the payment and then returning it during their nighttime efforts to perfect the tiny porcelain figures found in the center of the traditional Galette de Rois.
Janka was born in Salzburg in 1970 — the same year as all the other members of the breakaway Gelitin apart from Tobias Urban, who is four years older and was the last to leave Galette. Urban, against some resistance from the others, was finally admitted to the new group on the understanding that he destroy all the porcelain molds at the bakery and piss in the almond sacks as a confirmation of his loyalty to a new collective assertion of freedom. Janka grew up in a large house at the edge of Salzburg. He had been eager to join the original eight-person Galettene as a way to get over the stress of sleeping in a three-boy bunk bed as a child. After a childhood hell in proximity to two older brothers, he was drawn to the idea of an idealized brotherhood as a comfort against his childhood stress. He hated chaos and despised his brothers’ stupid good looks. A scruffy, unkempt and unsophisticated teenager, he was drawn to the elegant dress and love-hate relationship with the bourgeoisie embodied by Galettene. Confronted one day in his idiotic photo-lab job by elegant older men offering a taste of sophistication, it was the original older members who suggested he leave the dead-end career and move to Vienna to study at the University of Applied Arts. He was a failure from the start. His newly acquired expensive suits and fussy approach to food — including installations of lavish meals of organic food — were against the mood of the time. Unsurprisingly, he failed his diploma first time around, finally passing only once he had reluctantly cobbled together a superficially post-structural argument for his obsession with style and ecology. Never truly accepted in the original group, he now faced rejection once more.
Tobias Urban never found things that hard. It was he who always pushed against the restrictions of the first incarnation of what was later to become Gelitin. Raised in Munich, he was brought up in relative luxury. His father had nine children with four different women, and home life was far from boring as a result. Thankfully, his mother’s work as a child psychologist was always left outside the front door. Tobias was free to work on his drawings and writings, which even as a child showed extraordinary prescience and an engaging wit. It was the Munich art context that damaged him rather than the haut-bourgeois lifestyle he had grown to love. The bickering and point scoring that he witnessed during openings and conferences around the city drew him towards a statistical analysis of relationships. Rather than think about images and words, he turned to numbers. To this day he relaxes by reading stock market figures or calculating the demographic breakdown of visitors from the statistics that he always asks for whenever Gelitin produce a new project for a public institution. It was this love of numbers that drew him into the original Galettene. A young man — at that point still studying at the fine arts academy in Vienna — he would spend every lunch time alone with his small daughter — born when he was still in high school — in the finest cafés. He was always absorbed by the financial section of the newspaper or some new report on Austrian financial affairs. His love of expensive suits — ordered but rarely paid for in true demi-monde style — and his fascination with the world of numbers was so striking to the older members that they took him on immediately as the perfect person to analyze the tastes and trends at the heart of the ever-expanding Austrian food movement.
Wolfgang Gantner — the third member of the breakaway group — grew up in relatively modest surroundings in the Hernals district of Vienna near Schloss Neuwaldegg. Some days and many nights were spent on the streets of the city in search of something more. He often skipped school and helped his mother in her electrical supply store until one day a priest came in search of bulbs shaped like candle flames; young Wolfgang was entranced by his black dress and calm demeanor. From that point on all yearning and school skipping ended, and he devoted himself to the life of an alter boy. Dressed in a fine white smock with a ruffled collar and bright shiny shoes, he would stand radiant next to the priest, holding candle sticks or candle snuffers — offering his perfect hands up to hold the ribbon place-marker from the massive bible and generally being at one with his priest. His enlightenment came through the process of confession. One of his tasks was to stand in attendance whenever the priest offered confession to the faithful who had strayed. Wolfgang tried to keep the lavish descriptions of moral turpitude and sexual deviance at bay, but by the age of sixteen he could bear it no longer. After hearing a particularly repressed set of extraordinary confessions, he followed the humiliated and well-dressed man straight out of the church and into a new life as part of Galettene. The structure of confession would never leave him. It would become the basis of his aesthetic trials. Truly freed and encouraged by the nascent group to study public relations and political science, he unsurprisingly failed to finish his university studies. The application of all those confessions was too strong an urge to resist; he was often too tired to complete his university work, and his baking and cake-making tasks were complicated by his newfound sexual liberation. Sleeping with as many people as possible would make graduation impossible and create chaos within the original group — who had always confessed their desires and never realized them.
It was not as if Gelitin ever intended to work together. They had been sucked into a circle of older dilettantes and ended up alone by default. There is no leader because none of them had really understood the early work at the heart of the aspirant Austrian upper-middle classes. Gelitin were abandoned rather than formed by choice. They were left behind and thrust into a situation of potential due to a lack, rather than an excess, of intentions. So it was that the youngest four, now renamed Gelitin, turned up in New York in the mid-’90s. They tried to take up residence in the World Trade Center in place of the original group but were laughed out of the building — only to return five years later with their notorious The B Thing (2000) balcony project. The original group had already ordered vast quantities of catering equipment in an attempt to become a softly disruptive presence at the heart of the new urban farmer’s markets springing up around the city — some of this stuff can be seen in the backgrounds of photographs documenting The B Thing.
Florian Reither is the only country boy of the group. Growing up the son of a pig farmer turned village butcher, he was twelve when his family moved to Schattendorf on the border between Austria and Hungary. Pigs walked into the shop on a Monday and left as sausages on Wednesday. His three sisters were given the main task of sausage making and serving customers while Reither was treated like a little prince. Left to his own devices, he spent hours working on large-scale drawings for reconfiguring the border villages of the area in anticipation of the collapse of the Eastern Block. A stern, taciturn and scolding teenager, he alone had actively contacted the original Galettene group rather than merely fallen under their influence. He had secretly offered them bio-sausages — created by his oldest sister according to an old family recipe — but was rebuffed and repeatedly turned down. Reither had only been in the original collective for one week when he was as stunned as the other young acolytes by the founders’ departure for France. A solid family life behind him, Reither had married young, hoping to be calmed and centered by the comforts of family life. His own daughters, however, were far from the passive servant sisters he grew up with. Through the actions of the wild and unkempt young girls he finally saw his own potential and introduced the other members of the newly formed Gelitin to their energy and unbridled brilliance.
For Gelitin, the question would no longer be “What should we produce?” The original group was uninterested in the problems of art — issues that they relegated to the background while they proceeded to attempt a complete undermining of taste through assertion and obsessive brainstorming about what should be produced in the field of bio-cuisine. The abandoned core of the group was obliged by poverty and their own girlish potential to do something else. There was something special between them — not intellectually, but in the way they were at ease with each other and finally free of bourgeois anxieties. They abandoned plans, strategies, recipes and fine suits, instead embarking on a series of remarkable free-form activities. No longer caring about the art world or the anxieties of the superficial eco-conscious middle-classes that they had left behind, the sorry young group decided to show up for and somehow complete the existing list of exhibitions and residencies left behind when the true founders had left with their original Moog’s and the remainder of their porcelain molds in search of a French countryside that might still offer some pure pleasures — at least in the realm of food and drink. The subsequent story of Gelitin is well known. Their early works are indistinguishable from their late works — they care little for development and even less for progress. Their method is accidental — their trajectory unknown. Their characters are both close at hand and somehow out of reach: abandoned, humiliated, but content.
Liam Gillick is an artist based in New York.

This text was originally published in the May-June 2013 issue of Flash Art International. © Giancarlo Politi Editore, Milan, 2013

2022

Henni ALFTAN, Trevor BAIRD, Genesis BELANGER, Chris BOGIA, GELITIN, Elizabeth GLAESSNER, Vivian GREVEN, Ivy HALDEMAN, Sharon MADANES, Nikki MALOOF, Jesse MOCKRIN, Danielle ORCHARD, GaHee PARK, Veronika PAUSOVA, Christina QUARLES, Sarah SLAPPEY, Emily Mae SMITH, Michael STAMM, Jessica STOLLER, Young-jun TAK, Robin F. WILLIAMS, Mark YANG

September 3, 2022 - September 24, 2022

paris

10 IMPASSE SAINT CLAUDE 75003 PARIS

Finger Bang

curated by Genesis Belanger & GaHee Park

Daniel ARSHAM, Sophie CALLE, Jiang CHENG, Johan CRETEN, Jean-Philippe DELHOMME, Jens FÄNGE, CHEN Fei, GELITIN, Laurent GRASSO, Charles HASCOËT, Gregor HILDEBRANDT, JR, Izumi KATO, CHEN Ke, Klara KRISTALOVA, Trevon LATIN, ROMEO MIVEKANNIN, Danielle ORCHARD, zéh PALITO, Christiane POOLEY, Claude RUTAULT, SONG Kun, Kathia ST. HILAIRE, Xavier VEILHAN

June 9, 2022 - July 30, 2022

paris

76 RUE DE TURENNE 75003 PARIS
10 IMPASSE SAINT CLAUDE 75003 PARIS

Regarde-moi

2016

GELITIN

July 7, 2016 - August 20, 2016

hong kong

50 CONNAUGHT ROAD CENTRAL, 17TH FLOOR - HONG KONG

Gelatin Gelitin Gelintin

2015

GELITIN, Iván ARGOTE, Sophie CALLE, KATE ERICSON & MEL ZIEGLER, Gregor HILDEBRANDT, JR, Guy LIMONE, Gianni MOTTI, Paola PIVI

July 9, 2015 - August 21, 2015

new york

909 Madison Avenue New York

Paris Holiday

2014

Chiho AOSHIMA, Daniel ARSHAM, Sophie CALLE, Johan CRETEN, Tracey EMIN, Daniel FIRMAN, GELITIN, Laurent GRASSO, JR, Gregor HILDEBRANDT, KAWS, Bharti KHER, Klara KRISTALOVA, MR., Guy LIMONE, Ryan MCGINLEY, Takashi MURAKAMI, Prune NOURRY, Jean-Michel OTHONIEL, Paola PIVI, Terry RICHARDSON, Germaine RICHIER, Aya TAKANO, Xavier VEILHAN, Andy WARHOL, Marina ABRAMOVIC, Valerie BELIN, Guerrilla Girls, Alex KATZ, Annette MESSAGER, Yoko ONO, Rob PRUITT, Cindy SHERMAN, Taryn SIMON, Mickalene THOMAS, Agnès THURNAUER, Tom WESSELMANN

May 27, 2014 - June 25, 2014

paris

60 RUE DE TURENNE 75003 PARIS

G I R L

curated by Pharrell Williams

2012

GELITIN

March 10, 2012 - April 21, 2012

paris

10 IMPASSE SAINT CLAUDE 75003 PARIS

The Voulez Vous chaud

2009

Chiho AOSHIMA, Sophie CALLE, Johan CRETEN, Bernard FRIZE, GELITIN, Bharti KHER, KOLKOZ, Klara KRISTALOVA, Martin OPPEL, Jean-Michel OTHONIEL, Paola PIVI, Aya TAKANO, Tatiana TROUVÉ, Piotr UKLANSKI, Chris VASELL, Xavier VEILHAN, Peter ZIMMERMANN

March 14, 2009 - May 16, 2009

paris

76 RUE DE TURENNE 75003 PARIS

2006

GELITIN

June 24, 2006 - July 29, 2006

paris

76 RUE DE TURENNE 75003 PARIS

Qu'ils mangent de la brioche

2003

Piotr UKLANSKI, GELITIN

January 11, 2003 - February 22, 2003

paris

30 rue Louise Weiss 75013 Paris