Tobias Izsó: The Accountant / Kunstverein Dresden

VernissageTV

In Tobias Izsó's installation at Kunstverein Dresden, sculptural assemblages evoke a diary's enigmatic contents, forming a network of mirroring, contradicting objects that witness Herman Melville's Bartleby, the Scrivener. Silent and passive, they capture the story's ambivalent privacy: "I never feel so private as when I know you are here." Izsó explores interconnections between soft/rigid, body/shell, public routines/domestic rituals—starched cuffs sag, wood bends into zippers, textiles stiffen into husks, subverting social expectations.  Echoing Bartleby's "I would prefer not to," works reveal bureaucratic paralysis, alienation, and collapsing private/public boundaries. Monumental socks, empty briefcases, and stacked wooden shirts mock anthropomorphic failure, questioning value and belonging. Rooted in office/café interiors and bourgeois habits, fragmented historical elements expose fragile veneers of identity. Ultimately, Izsó's friction-filled language destabilizes order, asserting absence as presence in a parable of cultural memory and ambiguous belonging.   Curated by Eva Slabá, Tobias Izsó's solo exhibition The Accountant at Kunstverein Dresden runs until January 10, 2025. This video provides you with an exhibition walkthrough and interviews with the artist Tobias Izsó and curator Eva Slabá.  Tobias Izsó: The Accountant / Kunstverein Dresden. Dresden (Germany), October 17, 2025.

Transcript

00:00Hello, my name is Tobias Isu. I'm Austrian and welcome to my exhibition at Accountant.

00:30I actually come from a photography background, so I used to study photography for eight years

00:35and then shifted more to assemblage and sculptural works. At the moment I'm very into woodworks

00:43and sometimes I work with textiles and weaving and upholstery. Since the beginning of my studies

00:52I worked a lot with props and fragments. It's usually about domestic life and very much

01:02like this focal point of me being Austrian and trying to understand my surrounding in

01:08history. So like this petit bourgeois leftovers of like this Viennese coffee house culture

01:16and all these like social codes, these moments of hierarchy of like youth, comfort and wealth.

01:27And I've always been really intrigued by this, like going to a coffee house in Austria, everything

01:31is old and nothing is really from my own like time. And in order to like get an understanding

01:38from my surrounding, I kind of taught myself through like YouTube videos and online stuff,

01:46how to like learn these techniques. So how to do woodwork, how to carve, how to do upholstery.

01:53And lately I work a lot with steam bent wood, which one might know from like this old coffee house,

02:01chairs, tonnet for example might be known. And the exhibition, which is called Accountant,

02:09is about like these moments of representation, things which seem like oddly familiar,

02:16but I try to like give them some twists and give them some moments of questions.

02:22So for example, work over there is called Off the Cuff, which is a British saying,

02:28which comes or originates from like dinner parties where like the head of the table kind

02:35of holds a speech, but has like in their cuffs, some hidden notes, some guidelines,

02:42who to greet and how to behave, which I kind of found interesting that there's this like childlike

02:48demeanor in such a male dominant push bar setting. And for me, it's very much about like these moments of failure,

03:00the moments where things get a bit odd, where objects kind of have their own agenda.

03:07Like for me, I work with bent wood because it's so like fixed in static. So it's like a straight thing,

03:18which then becomes bent and then has some like body like curvature or something. So for me,

03:25that's like anthropomorphic moments in objects is something which I'm really interested in.

03:54So I actually come from a photography background. And for me, it was really funny because my teacher kind of

04:01thrilled us to learn how to build frames in the first semester. And I started in a really young age.

04:08I started when I was 17 and I was really like confused by the fact why I would need to build my own frames.

04:14But then I got super intrigued by woodwork and I spent the majority of my studies actually just in a woodwork shop.

04:21And I've done some Erasmus courses in Prague where I was actually in a sculpture class.

04:28But for me, it's interesting that I never really had this sculptural discourse.

04:32So I come from photography and I think therefore my works also can be read a bit differently

04:39because it always comes from kind of like a picture point of view.

04:44So back in the day when I was working more with photography, it was always about this trompe l'oeil moment.

04:51So something tries to look like it's real and I'm playing a lot with like shifts of materiality and scaling.

05:01So I think there's still some like photography leftovers inherent in a lot of works actually.

05:08It looks sexy.

05:09It looks sexy.

05:38So yeah, this year actually has been really busy.

05:46I'm really thankful to have this show now in Dresden.

05:50And I'm going to show also at the Art Cologne some works.

05:56And there's a prize in Zwickau also in Germany, the Max Pechstein Prize.

06:02And then I'm going to do a residency in China for two months.

06:05So I'm really curious for that.

06:08Yeah, it's going to keep on being busy, I'd say.

06:35Hello, welcome to the exhibition of Tobias Isha, the accountant.

06:47My name is Eva, Eva Slaba, I'm the curator of the show.

06:50And we met with Tobias I think around two years ago probably when he was internshiping or he had a,

06:57a studio internship in Prague and we started together to work on a project in a Hunt Kastner gallery.

07:05It was a duo show but it was the first cooperation we had together.

07:09And it was great and I fell in love with his work.

07:12So I was very happy to continue in our collaborative work.

07:16Thank you so much!

07:38What I truly admire in Tobias work is how he actually is able to intertwine or interconnect

07:55not only the formal aspects of his practice but also the ideas and the metaphorical way

08:02how he how he produces the work and then connects everything together and especially in this

08:11exhibition I would say since the title is the accountant it's all about our personality and our

08:17identity and belonging how we construct ourselves and how we present ourselves in the society which

08:23has some certain norms or expectations and that goes very well together how he uses the materials

08:30and the form for example the fragile veneers which are perfect on the on the surface but there is

08:36always something hidden behind them and as Tobias mentioned these anthropomorphic qualities really

08:42makes these objects special because they are somehow stiffened in a moment and you can feel there is

08:48something really alive about them and the gestures are very strong and also in the connection with the

08:57accountant for example he has this work which is this life life-size or over life-size sock you know

09:03which is a bit uncanny also maybe a bit funny but at the same time it has something quite uncanny about

09:11it like trying to hide your dirty linen or try to hide your money laundering for example and this whole idea

09:18about what we present as polished or representative is actually or can be questioned very deeply

09:48also what is quite interesting when you enter the space I feel like you enter and you feel someone's

10:12presence and this absence and presence it's quite characteristic for me at least in Tobias's work and it feels

10:21almost like these objects fell out of someone's diary or someone's personal life and you are trying to figure out

10:27what is actually behind them and this interpretive or interpretation area and poll is quite broad and I feel like

10:38that is something which viewers can find quite interesting that it brings lots of questions it's not firmly set what you

10:48should think or what you should feel about them

11:08for my future plans in case you would be in Prague in November you are very much welcomed to the duo show of Oleg and

11:31Kashka they are Polish artists it's going to be in Polanski Gallery and I'm very excited about it I think it's going to be

11:37beautiful

12:07so

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