Kurt Tong

KRAMPUS

Invited by INN SITU, Kurt Tong set out for Tyrol, making his way from Hong Kong to Innsbruck, to Tyrol’s valleys, Alpine villages, and remote hamlets. Inspired by movies like “Krampus: The Christmas Devil” (2013) or “A Christmas Horror Story” (2015), the Chinese artist stumbled across a complex figure, a bogeyman entrenched in the centuries-old but very much alive winter customs of a Central European cultural landscape that was absolutely foreign to him.

Born in Asia and raised in England, Kurt Tong explores such topics as belonging and collective identity. Central themes of his work, which oscillates between fiction and document, between staged presentation and meticulous historical research, are folklore, death cults, and the rituals that connect the hereafter with this world. Classic photography is supplemented by researched graphic material: postcards are shown side by side with pictures from private photo albums; newspaper clippings are combined with studio photographs. The line between factual information and fantasy blurs. Protocol and anecdote, factual account and fabricated story overlap to produce a deeply complex narrative of reality. The Tyrolean forest becomes the backdrop for a horror movie.

The Krampus and Saint Nicholas – an Alpine yin and yang

The Krampus has many attributes and is known in the German-speaking realm by various names: Tuifl, Perchten, Klaubauf. Generally, it is a figure that represents the dark, sinister, and uncontrollable juxtaposed with the bright, good, saintly Nicholas.

The Asian artist sees this simultaneity as an Alpine yin and yang, the universal conditionality of good and evil. In doing so, he ties together knowledge and notion, facts and the indescribable. We wander through an archive of memories, through a familiar landscape, which transforms into the stage of the mysterious. Though absent throughout all this, Kurt Tong’s Krampus is at the same time omnipresent.

Kurt Tong

studied at the London College of Communication. His book “Combing for Ice and Jade” was named one of best photobooks of 2019 by Time, El País, Esquire, and Art Paper. He was awarded the Prix Elysée in 2021, one of Europe’s most highly endowed prizes for photography. His work in conjunction with the INN SITU series is the artist’s first solo exhibition in the German-speaking realm. Kurt Tong lives and works in Hong Kong.

©BTV_Andreas Moser