Book launch of our First Monograph on Toni Schmale and a lecture by Lex Morgan Lancaster
19 November 2025, 6.30pm
Phileas, Opernring 17, 1010 Vienna
Please join us for the release of our latest First Monograph, dedicated to artist Toni Schmale, accompanied by a lecture from Lex Morgan Lancaster.
For the occasion of Toni Schmale’s book launch, we have invited Lex Morgan Lancaster, author of the text titled Toni Schmale’s Edging Aesthetics, to hold a lecture on queer abstraction. Lex Morgan Lancaster works at the intersections of queer and trans theory and contemporary art. Their research develops a queer-trans formalism, focusing on artworks that reject transparent representation in favour of volatile materiality and embodied encounter to produce queer, trans, anti-racist, and crip tactics. Their talk will explore the broader field of queer abstraction, within which Schmale’s practice is situated.
This publication is the first comprehensive overview of the sculptural and performative work of artist Toni Schmale (born 1980), whose practice explores the intersections of body, matter, and power structures. Engaging with industrial techniques and materials, Schmale investigates the relationship between physical and non-physical environments and challenges conventional perceptions of space, social power relations, and gender identification.
The scope of Schmale’s work is reflected in this volume through essays by curator Eduardo Andres Alfonso, based in New York; Sabeth Buchmann, Professor of Modern and Postmodern Art at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna; Lex Morgan Lancaster, scholar, curator, and professor at The Cooper Union, New York; and writer Kate Sutton, based in Zagreb.
The lecture will be in English.
Please register at: rsvp@phileas.art
