Smoke, Birds, Pun, Crisis – A Dialogic Glossary

In this book, there are 62 terms packed into a suitcase in a not-at-all accidental order. Blueprint ←, Heart ←, Container ←: within this frame ←, in a dialogue between Magdalena Kreinecker and Simon Nagy and lots of images, as well as through the invitation of several guests, a wide variety of text types, all revolving around M.’s work, can be found.

Many of them describe the technical processes of production. Some start off from individual artworks in order to secretly ← weave ← in other references; others take a certain pleasure ← in telling totally different stories from the get-go. Through many attempts, in a centrifugal logic of reference, they (the stories, the terms) attempt to capture what often seems unwieldy, complicated, incomprehensible, mysterious: artistic practice.

In all this madness ←, a game ← promises help: ›the green snakes help you to move forward.‹ Perhaps to a field where you will have a good day in the studio or where you will eat ice cream with friends. Later, having landed in the orchard ←, you take your small towel and swimming goggles, you peek through the blinds ← and then, you go inside: Smoke, Birds, Pun, Crisis is a dialogic glossary around the work of Magdalena Kreinecker, and, equally, an illustration of her method of working: a collaboration ← of many.

Language is always there: before and after and all over the place. We’re not writing this glossary for the fun of it. But omnipresence and causality are two different pairs of shoes. The works play cat and mouse with these shoes, as they present the viewer with the most commonplace and charged symbols: apples and hearts. But they are woven into such intricate conjuring strategies that even these otherwise so unshakeable archetypes lose their logical narratives. They demand new patterns with which to tie the shoes: ways of looking at things (and thus: ways of acting, ways of being) that cannot just be pigeonholed in well-known and familiar language, but which much rather shimmer indecisively.

A glossary on the work of Magdalena Kreinecker in dialogue with Simon Nagy and guests: Sofie Dederen, Julia Haugeneder, Barbara Juch, Yemo Park, Katrin Pirner, Maria Ritter

Smoke, Birds, Pun, Crisis – A Dialogic Glossary
Magdalena Kreinecker & Simon Nagy
Textem Verlag, 2025

200 x 260mm, 208pp; English & German
Perfect binding, offset print 
Edition of 500 

ISBN: 978-3-86485-352-4