In his second solo exhibition at Mario Mauroner Contemporary Art Vienna Carlos AIRES confronts the viewer with shocking images of catastrophes, wars and violence, everyday icons and attributes of a capitalist society. Dazzled by the shining light of the banknotes and the gleaming gold, the complexity of Carlos AIRES’ works is often only revealed upon second glance. This is also true, for example, in the exhibition’s eponymous work „Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)“, in which the artist cuts the text of the 1983 Eurythmics classic out of banknotes from the 20 strongest financial markets and poses the question whether our dreams are made of money. The letters and flies made of laser cut banknotes and fastened with gold pins call to mind entomological preparations and underscore our mortality. AIRES explains the vanitas motif as follows: „Love is in the Air“ deals with the dark side of our daily melodrama: the same finger that switches off the computer screen on which you have just watched horrible images of a war, afterwards rings the bell of a private nightclub.“
