Edition Detail

All the copies of this edition show the same painted motif of a dog under water, but each on different painterly backgrounds. This means that although they all share the same central motif, each is in fact a unique single work in which a figurative layer is superimposed onto an abstract plane. Both form and motif refer to Hugo Canoilas’s exhibition as winner of the Kapsch Contemporary Art Prize 2020. There a painterly carpet gives the gallery a distinct form and also serves as a stage for a performance with people dressed up as dogs. The artist thus combines a painterly backdrop with the motif of the dog in both the exhibition and this edition. In both cases, the painterly allows the imagination to freely operate, in no way attempting to restrict it to a corset of rules and customs, while the dog is a sign of an alternative form of existence and perception that questions our anthropocentric “certainties”.