Support Acts – Alban Karsten

“I have this job so I can keep doing my own work” is a common sentiment among artists who take on side jobs as art handlers, assistants, teachers, house painters, carpenters, or furniture makers. It is the premise for Support Acts, an exhibition by Alban Karsten and Vincent Knopper, who met through their mutual side jobs as art handlers and exhibition builders. To financially support their art practice, they build exhibitions for other artists in museums and exhibition spaces across the country.

For Support Acts, Alban and Vincent built an installation that interweaves their experiences as artists, builders, and art handlers. Their own sculptures merge with fragments of exhibitions they once helped to build; support structures are modified and repurposed, transforming once-functional displays into sculptures — and vice versa. Through this process of appropriation, they plot a timeline where distinctions between different creative roles dissolve. Side jobs and main jobs are juxtaposed in an attempt to bridge the conditions of being an artist, and to find the substance that connects these different (art) worlds.