The exhibition by Julius Pristauz combines physical and spatial experience with concrete social realities. It aims to encourage visitors to engage with the tangible and invisible dynamics and forces that surround them. In the exhibition, wind becomes a force that shapes, slows down movements, changes directions, challenges, drives progress or hinders it.

Julius Pristauz conceived the exhibition as a single installation entitled GEGENWIND (German for “against the wind”) and interprets this term in both a physical and political sense. Working across various mediums and against a backdrop of increasing repression—which particularly affects the queer community as well as the cultural scene as a whole—he questions existing infrastructures that enable freedoms while at the same time increasingly undermining and eroding them.

Rather than being understood as a specific motif, ‘Gegenwind’ is a state of being. The light installation sketch for an assembly (2025) and several new works developed specifically for the exhibition come together within a spatial constellation in which hope, resistance, and the shifting balance of power intertwine. The differing lighting settings and air flow generated by the kinetic sculptures—produced specifically for the exhibition at Kunst Raum Mitte—together create an installation that makes the personal experience, the socio-political climate and the minimalist form and materiality of the works equally tangible.

There is no direct English translation for ‘Gegenwind’, which makes its current and historical significance in Germany all the more apparent: artists at the former galerie weisser elefant also used their art to oppose the GDR system, while simultaneously facing the “Wind of Change” brought about by reunification and the questions of identity it raised. 

Exhibition curator: Natalie Keppler

Events:

22.10.2026, 7 pm
Performance by Julius Pristauz with Elena Francalanci,
sketch for a conversation on pleasure and pain (2026)

20.11.2026, 6 pm
Guided tour and talk
with Julius Pristauz and Natalie Keppler

Julius Pristauz (born 1998, Judenburg, Austria) lives and works in Berlin. He studied transmedia art at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna and performance at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Brno, the Czech Republic. In his multimedia practice, Pristauz explores performative forms of expression, their relationship to built space, and social binaries as artistic material and structural context. His installations and performances repeatedly address the construction and permeability of identities and social surfaces, as well as areas of tension between the private and public spheres. In addition to his work as a freelance artist, he works as an independent curator and writer in the field of contemporary culture. His artistic works have been exhibited at venues including the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart (2026), the Kunsthal Mechelen (2025), the Kunstraum Lakeside in Klagenfurt am Wörthersee (2025), the Kunstbunker Nuremberg (2024), the Kunsthalle Wien (2023) and the Halle für Kunst Steiermark, Graz (2023).

The artist is kindly supported by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Housing, Art, Culture, Media and Sport.

The exhibition is part of the third and last sequence of the DISSOLUTIONS program, which explores processes of dissolving and reformulating narratives. The sequence includes a series of events. More information on Sequence III can be found here.

The exhibition by Julius Pristauz combines physical and spatial experience with concrete social realities. It aims to encourage visitors to engage with the tangible and invisible dynamics and forces that surround them. In the exhibition, wind becomes a force that shapes, slows down movements, changes directions, challenges, drives progress or hinders it.

Julius Pristauz conceived the exhibition as a single installation entitled GEGENWIND (German for “against the wind”) and interprets this term in both a physical and political sense. Working across various mediums and against a backdrop of increasing repression—which particularly affects the queer community as well as the cultural scene as a whole—he questions existing infrastructures that enable freedoms while at the same time increasingly undermining and eroding them.

Rather than being understood as a specific motif, ‘Gegenwind’ is a state of being. The light installation sketch for an assembly (2025) and several new works developed specifically for the exhibition come together within a spatial constellation in which hope, resistance, and the shifting balance of power intertwine. The differing lighting settings and air flow generated by the kinetic sculptures—produced specifically for the exhibition at Kunst Raum Mitte—together create an installation that makes the personal experience, the socio-political climate and the minimalist form and materiality of the works equally tangible.

There is no direct English translation for ‘Gegenwind’, which makes its current and historical significance in Germany all the more apparent: artists at the former galerie weisser elefant also used their art to oppose the GDR system, while simultaneously facing the “Wind of Change” brought about by reunification and the questions of identity it raised. 

Exhibition curator: Natalie Keppler

Events:

22.10.2026, 7 pm
Performance by Julius Pristauz with Elena Francalanci,
sketch for a conversation on pleasure and pain (2026)

20.11.2026, 6 pm
Guided tour and talk
with Julius Pristauz and Natalie Keppler

Julius Pristauz (born 1998, Judenburg, Austria) lives and works in Berlin. He studied transmedia art at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna and performance at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Brno, the Czech Republic. In his multimedia practice, Pristauz explores performative forms of expression, their relationship to built space, and social binaries as artistic material and structural context. His installations and performances repeatedly address the construction and permeability of identities and social surfaces, as well as areas of tension between the private and public spheres. In addition to his work as a freelance artist, he works as an independent curator and writer in the field of contemporary culture. His artistic works have been exhibited at venues including the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart (2026), the Kunsthal Mechelen (2025), the Kunstraum Lakeside in Klagenfurt am Wörthersee (2025), the Kunstbunker Nuremberg (2024), the Kunsthalle Wien (2023) and the Halle für Kunst Steiermark, Graz (2023).

The artist is kindly supported by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Housing, Art, Culture, Media and Sport.

The exhibition is part of the third and last sequence of the DISSOLUTIONS program, which explores processes of dissolving and reformulating narratives. The sequence includes a series of events. More information on Sequence III can be found here.