Kunstraum Niederösterreich, Wien, Österreich, 15.03.–04.05.2024
Perhaps you have experienced it yourself before: A situation was so painful and unbearable that you burst out laughing uncontrollably. It is a defense mechanism of the mind that may seem grotesque and even inappropriate to those around us, but its function is to protect us from feelings of sheer despair, if only at least for a short time.
The group exhibition Bliss, bliss, bliss is guided by the theme of such bizarre laughter. Against the backdrop of an increase in apocalyptic scenarios, the persistence of wars and terror as well as an unimpeded climate crisis that is only escalating further, the show examines conscious and unconscious coping mechanisms of the mind. What impact does the experience of a "declining world" have on the way we feel, desire and relate to ourselves and to others?
Six artists engage with questions like these from a personal as well as societal perspective, exploring moments of ecstasy, desire and excess. Their works show [...]
Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria, 15.03.–09.10.2024
Play is a special way of experiencing the world. It is a metaphor for social coexistence and a driver of cultural transformation. Enjoyable play helps us discover ourselves, our individual qualities, and abilities. Free play, meanwhile, can often turn bitterly serious. Playful contests let us experience social cooperation and competition. We learn how rules and systems operate and what it means to bend and break them.
The exhibition Playing Rules! centers on the theme of play in art. From nature, the body, and sport to communication and media imagery, these are just some of the areas artists explore through play, transforming them by way of interaction and improvisation. They show how art uses imagination to expand the limits of the possible and the potential of play in representing and, not infrequently, subverting social relationships.
With works by Marc Adrian, Josef Bauer, VALIE EXPORT, Harun Farocki, Nilbar Güreş, Hans Haacke, [...]
Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria, 02.02.–09.10.2024
The Museum is taking the 20th anniversary of its site on the Mönchsberg as an opportunity to place a focus on increasing the visibility of the collections entrusted to it. For most of the year, two levels on the Mönchsberg (1 and 3) will be used for four exhibitions from the collections, though strictly speaking these are two exhibitions that will be modified halfway through their run to create new presentations with new focal points. The concept and content of these four parts are revealed in their titles.
The exhibitions for the anniversary year are presented by the Museum der Moderne Salzburg in cooperation with the Generali Foundation.
The exhibition Breaking Down Walls! reflects on the insights of the intellectual movement known as the spatial turn, which emphasizes the vital importance of space or the conception of space as an analytical instrument. Its focus is not just on the static space of geometry but on space as a phenomenon shaped, [...]
Wien Museum, Vienna, Austria, 01.02.–28.04.2024
The Karlskirche is regarded as the most important baroque structure in Austria and is a Viennese landmark. Its architect, Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach (1656–1723), is the focus of the first special exhibition in the reopened Wien Museum. Almost 70 years after the last major exhibition of Fischer’s work, and with the help of Werner Feiersinger’s exhibition design, his extraordinary buildings and projects are reassessed and placed in a contemporary artistic context.
Fischer’s architectural oeuvre ranges from summer and city residences for the Viennese nobility, to church buildings for the Archbishop of Salzburg and the major imperial monuments of baroque Vienna. By eloquently referring to antiquity while being unmistakably modern, his buildings complied with the notion of noble representation, with its roots in tradition and history.
“Entwurff Einer Historischen Architectur,” which Fischer published in 1721, was the first [...]
UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, China, 27.01.–28.04.2024
“Dream Time” explores the themes of will, hope, memory, and imagination. Through the investigation of complex meanings of dreams (both as reveries and aspiration), fifteen individual artists and/or art collectives around the world are invited to showcase works across various forms, including painting, sculpture, photography, video, installation, and performance, and to delve into the exploration of subjectivity and empowerment. Their works are often interwoven with subjective perception, mechanisms of desire, intimate experiences, gender and cultural identity, and collective memories, forming intricate narratives that traverse spatiotemporal dimensions in the interplay of emotional textures. In this exhibition, what is dreamt of at present is from time to time transformed into a dreamscape steeped in psychological and socio-historical fiction, while projecting an emotional and imaginative vision of the future world. In a challenging present, what can art reveal to us? [...]
MLZ Art Dep, Trieste, Italy, 27.01.–06.04.2024
In the first edition of Space Uncurated, MLZ Art Dep and Wiener Art Foundation present, in collaboration with Martin Janda Gallery in Vienna, a dialogue between the artists Nilbar Güreş, Turkish of Kurdish origin, and the Portuguese artist Hugo Canoilas. The depths of the ocean, a generating place unknown to our eyes, is the starting point for Hugo Canoilas in his search for a new pictorial space. In the exhibition 'At the extremes of good and evil' (Mumok, Vienna, 2020) Canoilas shows us a unique, living and ephemeral gesture. The painting, angled horizontally on the floor, offers a change of perspective that can also be understood metaphorically as a deviation of social experience and behaviour. In 2022, Hugo Canoilas had a solo exhibition entitled 'Sculptured in darkness' at Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian in Lisboa. Created for the 31st Biennal of São Paulo, Wildness is an iconic photographic work that captures [...]