Patrick Schabus is a Berlin-based artist and writer. He received his MFA from the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna in 2016. Between 2015 and 2016, he operated an independent exhibition space in Vienna called Mandelkern Project.
Articles
Art without A Proper Pedestal: Patrick Schabus on the 58th Edition of Venice Biennale
Since 1895, art professionals, and those who want to be considered as such, travel to the island city of Venice to attend the Venice Biennale. The city itself is maybe the only one not built near water but on top of it. Built on a wooden support system that reaches the bottom of the sea, Venice… Read More »
Abandoning Necropoesis Once & For All
A spider creates its home by attaching its building material to foreign structures, then uses it as a trap to catch insects, small birds, reptiles and mammals. In a number of tribal societies scattered across Central Asia, the Middle East and Eastern Europe, there exists a myth about the origins of spiders. For these tribes, there used to exist two species of spiders, but we only know one of them since the other went extinct. The one that remains today searches for spots where other animals could be found. The cleverest of these spiders analyzes the changing flight patterns of its preys and constantly moves from one location to another in their search. The extinct species of spider did something else. Once they found a large carcass of a dead or dying animal it would build its cobweb around it. These spiders would stay around their net even long after the carcass would turn to dust and most of these spiders would then start to starve. All the while the net would expand in the hope that some small insects could be found along the way. In the end, most of the spiders either left to become solitary hunters, forming other species of spiders or fought for the few scraps of insects still coming to their bloated net.