How do we cope with existential uncertainties? With the tensions they create and the limbo they leave us in? These are some of the questions that spring to mind at the Gezeiten [Ebb & Flow] exhibition, which brings together for the first time works by Sonia Leimer, Tobias Pils and Hans Schabus at the gallery at Domgasse 6.

Sonia Leimer’s artistic work explores the spaces we inhabit, their condition and their future; here she is showing two sculptures from the Space Junks group of works. Each of the stainless steel objects placed on the floor is composed of two hemispheres connected by a cylindrical ring. The symmetry of the sculptures with their grooved and meticulously handcrafted surfaces contrasts with the tarnishing of the welds and the holes that tear open the outer shell to reveal the dark interior of these spherical shapes. As the title of the work intimates, these technolook structures are reminiscent of space debris that has impacted the surface of the planet instead of burning up on re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere. The dented objects bear testimony to a change of direction, to an unplanned journey charted by the complex relationship between humankind, technology and nature.

Tobias Pils’s enigmatic paintings address the universal themes of transience and temporality. He combines figurative and surreal motifs to create an idiosyncratic and ambiguous imagery that allows all manner of interpretations. At its centre are figures whose relationships to one another and their surroundings remain unclear. They are positioned vertically and horizontally within the image space or captured against backgrounds of different colors that also serve to set them apart. The titles of the paintings – von innen nach außen [From the Inside Out] and von außen nach innen [From the Outside In] – refer to changes of perspective and displacements that maintain their protagonists in a state of ambivalence. But Pils also uses his color palette to suggest a certain latitude for his figures. Indeed, that palette is usually scaled back to mere black, white and shades of grey, but here it is enhanced to include a vivid blue and a lush green. These splashes of color are used to highlight the hands and feet of his figures, parts of the body that play a pivotal role in shaping actions and directions.

Sculptor’s Studio is the name of a constellation in the Southern Sky. And, indeed, Hans Schabus’s large-scale mobile Sculptor’s Studio (my house is on fire) does float within the gallery space like a constellation, but one composed of a tyre, a door and a section of staircase. Indeed, space with its history and infrastructure as well as its relationship to the viewer is the focal point of Schabus’s sculptural and installation work. With Sculptor’s Studio (my house is on fire), he combines the private space of creative artistic output with the space in which it is assembled and showcased to the public. The additional title my house is on fire is disconcerting, suggesting an existential threat that literally hangs in the air while the absence of context leaves us in the dark. The charredlooking elements of the mobile may provide a clue. Their appearance is due to a creosote treatment, evoking associations with the end of the fossil age and a concomitant transformation as yet unspecified.

Ebb and flow, that recurring movement of the ocean’s waves, is predicated on regularities. Yet its dynamics and therefore its influence on nature and our habitats elude our control and our certainties. That is true, too, of the works of Sonia Leimer, Tobias Pils and Hans Schabus, which can also be read as an expression of a certain loss of control, a state of limbo seeking orientation. Understanding the uncertain as certainty manifests itself in these works, a slightly illusory yet encouraging prospect nonetheless.