VISITING HOURS
Fridays and Saturdays 11:00 AM — 5:00 PM
Anna Jermolaewa, Still from Chernobyl Safari, 2014/2021, video. Courtesy of the artist.
The MAK Center for Art and Architecture is pleased to announce the 25th iteration of Garage Exchange Vienna—Los Angeles: Untitled Energy, featuring Vienna-based artist Anna Jermolaewa and Los Angeles-based artist Sophie Friedman-Pappas at the Mackey Apartments Garage Top.
Untitled Energy examines power through its effects, focusing on the impacts on people, places, animals, and objects. In this exhibition, Anna Jermolaewa and Sophie Friedman-Pappas use historical and personal cues to create surreal and poetic images using a range of mediums. Each of these works unearth a concealed structure through the lens of resistance. Those impacted reveal a different kind of power.
In Chernobyl Safari (2014/21), Jermolaewa visits the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone twice in a seven year period, one of the most radioactively contaminated areas on Earth. The highly restricted area has become a haven for animals, thriving in the absence of humans. The video documents the undisturbed animals living in the disturbed landscape. A paradise with over four hundred species, including many classified as endangered, this is a place where the human impact leaves an invisible trace. These animals are not truly free of human danger, they are poisoned. Their killer, the same means as their liberator.
Friedman-Pappas’ new series of drawings, I'm Finished, You're Finished, and We're Finished (2025), examine the Wall Street Bombing of 1920 through the perspective of the horse used to pull the wagon full of explosives. The attack, which killed 40, is widely believed to have been carried out by Italian anarchist Mario Buda, although officially the bombing is still unsolved, in part because the body of the horse that pulled the wagon was cleaned up before the police could investigate. The horse’s remains were sent to a factory on nearby Barren Island, which processed them together with other horse carcasses into mattress stuffing, glue, and buttons, absorbing the animal’s body back into the economic system it had been conscripted to assault.
Untitled Energy works to upend conventional hierarchical structures by offering a counternarrative, considering political ideology, human-caused disasters, and personal struggle through its side effects. In this space, the unintentional supersedes the intention, providing access points through back doors. The traces that are left behind tell another story.
Artists
ANNA JERMOLAEWA
Anna Jermolaewa (b. 1970, Leningrad) works primarily in the mediums of photography, video, and installation. Her main interest is the analysis of functional structures of society and social systems in everyday life. She continually focuses on the basic conditions of human existence and the nature of man, capturing the relationship between the individual and the masses, freedom and restriction, power and powerlessness. Jermolaewa graduated from the University of Vienna in 1998, and the Vienna Art Academy in 2002. Since 2019, she has been a Professor for Experimental Art at University of Art and Design Linz, Austria. Anna Jermolaewa represented Austria at Biennale Arte 2024, and has had solo exhibitions throughout the country. Her works are part of various collections including the Stedelijk Museum, Friedrich Christian Flick Collection, Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, MUMOK—Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Museum Startgalerie Artothek, Tyrolean State Museum, and the Vehbi Koc Foundation.
SOPHIE FRIEDMAN-PAPPAS
Sophie Friedman-Pappas (b. 1995, New York, NY) divides her time between New York and Los Angeles sharing endless stories of utilitarian renovations, waste valorization, and the accidental undermining of these projects by their own patrons and designers. Friedman-Pappas has held solo and two-person exhibitions at MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA; Meredith Rosen Gallery, New York, NY; in lieu, Los Angeles, CA; and Alyssa Davis Gallery (organized by Octagon) and has participated in group exhibitions at Paul Soto, New York; François Ghebaly, Los Angeles; Soft Opening, London, among others.
ABOUT GARAGE EXCHANGE
Garage Exchange Vienna—Los Angeles seeks to foster relationships, conversations and collaborations in the arts between Los Angeles and Austria. In order to expand the cultural exchange at the core of the Artists and Architects-in-Residence program, the Austrian Federal Chancellery and the MAK Center invite Austrian and Vienna-based alumni residents to collaborate with L.A. artists and architects of their choosing at the Garage Top at the Mackey Apartments for the Garage Exchange Vienna-Los Angeles exhibition series.
Garage Exchange: Untitled Energy is curated by MAK Center Exhibitions and Programs Manager, Seymour Polatin. The exhibition is made possible with support from the Austrian Consulate General, Los Angeles.
