Libidinally charged works of the last 3 decades by Herbert Brandl are presented by Florian Steininger and Ingried Brugger in the Bank Austria Kunstforum Wien. CastYourArt visited the artist at his atelier and produced an artist-portrait. Watch now …

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The images constantly seduce the gaze, captivate it and invite the viewer to transcend the pictorial surface, look behind it in order to discover the spaces opening up within their –our- interior.
Brandl does not start his work on the basis of reality in order to abstract from it, he rather develops a pictorial grammar of perception –feelings or thoughts- and avails himself of the musical vocabulary of colour and of the personal expressive panache as trademark. more »

On the occasion of the “Botero” exhibition in the Bank Austria Kunstforum, curator Dr. Evelyn benesch will speak about the artist’s Abu Ghraib series.

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In the years 2004-2005, Columbian painter Fernando Botero worked on a series of paintings named Abu Ghraib. Ever since the photographs of the Abu Ghraib prison were published in 2004, this name came to symbolize a policy that endorses abuse and torture in the name of justice. The hypocrisies around the events in Abu Ghraib prompted the artist to paint this cycle. US museums simply disregarded these works during Botero exhibitions. When liberal Berkeley University finally showed this cycle, Botero donated the entire series to the university in gratitude. In the exhibition “Botero”, in Bank Austria Kunstforum, “Abu Ghraib”, the outraged artist’s cycle on human brutality, will be on display until January 15, 2012. (wh/ca)

Fernando Botero: „In my paintings, there are improbable, not impossible things. “Fernando Boteros work is on view at Bank Austria Kunstforum in Vienna. An artist- and exhibition-portrait.

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“When you start a painting, it is outside of you. By the time you finish, you are already inhabiting it.”

The history of art belongs to those who have learned to see differently; those who have made visible what is hidden. The artist envisages the object, and presents it in a form which allows for immediate recognition of the message. The energy and emotion that flow into the picture become an intuitive experience, as occurs with the erotic friction between reality and art in Fernando Botero’s oeuvre. more »

Aivazovsky is regarded as the master of seascapes. In his lifetime he dedicated himself to this motif as a metaphor for life, of desire as well as the struggle between nature and culture.

For the first time, the Bank Austria Kunstforum shows a retrospective of the artist outside of Russia and the Ukraine. There are fifty representative paintings on display, among them main works from the Aivazovsky Museum in Feodosia and the Russian Museum in Saint Petersburg that have never been shown abroad.

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As legend has it, he died in his studio with a brush in his hand, 111 years ago. In his exceptionally long life he actually left only this one painting unfinished, out of the estimated 6000 he painted. In his lifetime his works were already marvelled at, admired, venerated – and purchased. more »

An exhibition by Kucsko with generative Sound installation by Karlheinz ESSL in Bank Austria Kunstforum - tresor.

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Audiointerview with Karlheinz Essl in German

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Audiointerview with Kucsko in German

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The vault of the Bank Austria Kunstforum is a room full of references and allusions, with its own history and charisma, a chamber of wonders, whose architecture, with its safe deposits boxes inseparably built-in as a part of the concrete, its impenetrable reinforced concrete walls, their double protective layers and its access control corridor, makes it “ready made”, just waiting to be filled as a vessel for ideas. Does that make it “art”?

Jürgenssen explores the scope of female identity constructions and the gender roles within her sociocultural environment of the 1970ies. By means of drawings and photography she develops surreal and subversive counter-concepts and demonstrates that humor and poetry can very well go along with feminist strategies.

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In cooperation with Verbund Collection, the Bank Austria Kunstforum has the first posthumous retrospective of Birgit Jürgenssen on display, with 250 works of art of different media. In drawings, watercolors, Polaroids, photograms, objects, performances and videos, Jürgenssen explores the scope of female identity constructions and the gender roles in her immediate sociocultural environment. more »

Frida Kahlo’s work oscillates between self stylizing and radical authenticity, relentlessly facing the question of her female identity and at the same time touching the search for identity of an entire nation.

Kahlo’s Retrospektive can be seen at the Bank Austria Kunstforum from 9.09.2010 till 5.12.2010.

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When André Breton, during a visit to Mexico in 1938, thought having discovered the surrealist counterpart to the European avant-garde of his time in Frida Kahlo’s work, she briskly deemed her own painting anything but an escape. “I never painted dreams. What I painted was my reality.” To this, the Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes stated in one of his essays: “Frida Kahlo reminds us permanently that the matter used by the French surrealists to make a system was always everyday reality in Latin America, part of the cultural stream, a spontaneous fusion of myth and actuality, dream and waking, reason and fantasy.” more »

When one feasts with the eyes, does one realize that one is consuming more than just food? An episode on the Augenschmaus exhibition at Bank Austria Kunstforum in Vienna.

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The fact that we carefully inspect the food that we consume is potentially relevant to culture. A civilized person does not simply eat, she dines more »

Faced with the challenge of representing a recently merged corporate collection comprised of over 60,000 works, curator Walter Guadagnini went back to the basic questions concerning art: Why is art important? What role does it play in society? How does it relate to our everyday life? As the art community becomes ever more global, how can we encompass the vastly diverse range of art that is presented to us?

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The exhibition, “PastPresentFuture”, at the Bank Austria Kunstforum, is an introduction to the UniCredit Group art collection, which now includes the combined collections of all the individual banks that have merged into UniCredit, including UniCredit in Italy, HypoVereinsbank in Germany, and Bank Austria, thereby making it one of the most valuable corporate collections in Europe. more »

It began, as it had to begin, how painting – which captures something new, thereby disturbing the conventional view – nearly always begins. With the changing times. With the meeting of artistic minds. With admiration that follows, along with a lack of understanding and sometimes even denial.

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Four years after Georges Braque moved into the French capital from Normandy, he was still painting landscapes in the Impressionistic style. However, his sphere of influence changed. He admires Matisse, Derain, Dufy, and Friesz. Not two years passed by before he became one of the Fauves, one of the young wild ones, as the art critic Louis Vauxcelles patronizingly referred to them on the occasion of an exhibition. more »