What is it about a cabinet filled with potatoes that makes it so captivating? Tobias Izsó (b.1997) is a Vienna-based artist who manages to turn the mundane into a riddle, inviting us to look twice – and then once more, just to be sure. Through a practice that spans sculpture, installation, and photography, with a special interest in assemblage, he manages to externalise the interior, not merely in a spatial sense. Using such materials as leather, fabric, or wood – associated more with craftsmanship than “fine art” – to create phantasmagorical variations on everyday objects, he demonstrates that it is the items we surround ourselves with routinely that have the most to say.
If objects are shaped and changed by their users, it makes perfect sense that Izsó would be drawn to the medium of assemblage. In the off the cuff series, jumpers tangle with chairs, textile samples in varying patterns and colours climb over hangers, forming vivid compositions and equally vivid emotional landscapes of their undefined owners. The organic shapes recur and flow like the days of routine that moulded them.
Things gone rogue
Could a piece of furniture, used often enough, begin to resemble its owner? Izsó does not shy away from animating the inanimate; he names a gracefully curved white dressing table with a mirror-neck, A sceptical-looking woman, a sturdy bookcase – Father Figure. An armchair shaped like a reclining female torso rests its armrests in languid ease, the quilting of its upholstery forming a “navel”; another chair merges with a jumper, perhaps left hanging there for weeks. Here, chaos is not the opposite of order but its mirror image – its future form. Izsó redeems the excuses once given to parents, urging us to tidy our rooms: in the chaos of a cluttered space, one can find reserves of beauty.
Remarkably, what makes Izsó’s works feel so familiar – domestic, even – is also what instils them with unease. Natural materials combined with fantastical forms evoke something distinctly uncanny. There is an unsettling quality to the wooden, leg-like shoelaces that emerge from the wall, as if attempting to put on shoes before touching the floor – almost like a person would, but not quite, piercing through them in the process.
As curator Andrea Kopranovic sums up in the curatorial essay for off the cuff: “(…) today we are faced with the question of how to engage with a material and spiritual inheritance that understands confinement as well-being”. Should objects created to be domesticated now appear threatening, once released into the gallery space? Even the title of the series, off the cuff, conjures the image of a homeowner returning to find their furniture come alive in a fit of emotion. Or do these objects only grow cold once immobilised by the gaze of a foreign spectator, wrenched from their natural habitat?
If walls had eyes
If the subject is the interior – be it the interior of a home or of the self – it follows that one is being watched. The installation Screen also depicts a messy room, though it is far more striking than earthy-toned, slightly abstract Taking Cover. The arched wooden frame evokes a mirror, but its “reflection”, seen through a fisheye perspective, reveals a wildly cluttered room. Who, stepping into an art gallery, wants to be asked: “Have you tidied your room?” – or worse, told: “You’re a mess”?
Indeed, when our interiors are externalised, how much say do we have in what is revealed? Inanimate things often stand as unassuming witnesses to our most vulnerable moments, and it seems that when Izsó is not depicting them, he is depicting them from their perspective. This voyeuristic tendency is perhaps most apparent in his series aptly titled Interiors.
Interior IV offers a glimpse into a “ladies’ room”, with the viewer positioned as if having just walked down an empty corridor reflected in the mirror hanging opposite. From around the corner, the bare legs of a woman appear, seemingly lifeless. The dimly lit hallway and the portrait of Donald Trump looming menacingly on the right side of the frame heighten the sense of unease. He appears to be looking directly at us – but that is impossible, since we are not even there. The mirror clearly reflects only the empty corridor.
Public spaces, private moments
A sizable part of Izsó’s body of work consists of frames taken on public transport, capturing ordinary-looking people in unremarkable moments, clearly unaware that they are being observed. Naturally, these candid shots are not particularly flattering – but there is no trace of mockery in the watcher’s gaze. On the contrary, Izsó seems to elevate his subjects, almost mythologising them through saturated colours, sharp contrasts of light and shadow, and perspectives that draw them into the centre of attention.
His photographs possess a softness, a subtle blur of contour that lends them the appearance of acrylic paintings. The artist captures moments of intimacy caught by chance, in passing, almost absent-mindedly, simply by virtue of sharing a confined space. There is tenderness in how the almost-touching hands of two passengers sharing the narrow ledge of a bus window become, in his eyes, those of potential lovers.
What is clear throughout Izsó’s oeuvre, regardless of the at times stark aesthetic differences between each series, is his reverence for the ordinary – a recognition that the private gesture, intended for no one but oneself, is no less meaningful than the one we deem worth putting on show.
Tobias Izsó studied Photography and Fine Art at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. His interests expanded during an Erasmus exchange in Prague, where he focused on Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts, and then attended the Academy of Art, Architecture and Design. He has been exhibiting his work since 2017 (including two solo shows) in Germany, Austria, and the Czech Republic. He’s currently represented by the Christine König Galerie in Vienna.
