Stefan Zsaitsits – Mond am Tag

Starting May 13, 2025, Galerie Sturm & Schober will present new works by Austrian Artist Stefan Zsaitsits. The exhibition is titled “Moon by Day”—a reference to a moment that feels disorienting because it doesn’t fit the familiar picture: When the moon appears in broad daylight, something seems off. The familiar suddenly becomes strange. These very shifts—these in-between spaces of perception—are at the heart of Zsaitsits’s artistic exploration. His drawings probe the uncanny in the everyday, the invisible behind the visible.

His works emerge through a quiet, multi-layered process that often begins with a vague idea. Over time, the image develops layer by layer—through overlap, rejection, and revision. This is especially evident in his large-format pieces, which are composed of assembled paper fragments: individual sections are drawn, cut, reworked, and rearranged. The resulting image doesn’t hide its own creation—it makes the process visible. In these works, fragments of memory, archetypal symbols, everyday objects, and traces of human presence are interwoven into dense, enigmatic visual worlds.

At the core of his work are tensions: between dream and reality, order and chaos, meaning and absurdity. The human figure plays a key role—sometimes appearing as a clear form, other times as a hint, a trace. Familiar signs and objects reappear, but never in their expected contexts. As a result, they feel both recognizable and alien—they open up to new, ambiguous interpretations.

Zsaitsits works intuitively and without a predetermined concept. His drawings arise from an internal monologue—a quiet dialogue with his own thinking. In this process, the personal and the universal merge. Personal experiences, memories, and psychological states flow into the work, along with societal themes that may not take center stage but resonate in the background. What particularly interests him is not clear-cut messages, but rather ambiguity—the unclear, the contradictory, the things that resist definitive interpretation.

Instead of closed narratives, he creates open visual spaces that invite further reflection. His drawings do not demand a single “correct” reading—they allow room for individual associations and emotions. Some works are minimal and focused—almost like visual poems. Others unfold across large formats, complex and detailed—like narrative novels in pictorial form.

Moon by Day is a quiet, powerful exhibition that demonstrates the expressive potential of drawing as an artistic medium. With minimal means, Stefan Zsaitsits opens up entire inner worlds—full of memories, moods, and subtle dissonances.

The exhibition will be on view at Galerie Sturm & Schober in Vienna starting May 13, 2025.

“I work with fragments—thoughts, images, memories—that aim to form a whole, though perhaps they never fully can.”
– Stefan Zsaitsits