On the occasion of his exhibition “İz” in Istanbul starting on 12 October 2011 6.30 pm at
Artgalerim Nişantaşı we replay from our archives the artist portrait of Cemal Gürsel Soyel.

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CastYourArt visited the Cyprus-born painter, Cemal Gürsel Soyel, in Vienna, and accompanied him on his way to his studio. The resulting podcast shows more than just the streets of Vienna. The walk we take with him leads us down the path of the artist to his painting – both in a literal and a pleasantly ironic sense. (written by Wolfgang Haas / translated by Janima Nam)

The media artist and composer Thomas Wagensommerer studied digital media technology, philosophy and transdisciplinary art. His compositional works are positioned at the interfaces between man and machine – a field of activity which is in rapid transformation, due to permanent technological change and the fundamental deepening of the relationship between man and technology.

Of Making Hear.

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As a media artist, Thomas Wagensommerer explores the sound faculty of electronic instruments (the existence of sounds produced by it) as well as the possibilities of sound design in the era of the Web 2.0. more »

Together with Maria Lassnig he is considered the originator of Informal Art in Austria. His works are on display in the key museums all over the world. An artist’s portrait of Arnulf Rainer. This podcast was realised with the kind support of UNIQUA ArtCercles.

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He visited André Breton, the writer and theoretical head of surrealism in Paris – this was the moment he turned away from surrealism. Together with Maria Lassnig, he is considered the originator of informal painting in Austria, his works are on display in the main museums on the entire globe. The road to success has at times been stony, tells Rainer, whose first solo exhibition took place in the St. Stephan gallery of Monsignore Otto Mauer in 1955. The beginning of his overpaintings for instance were not based upon any philosophical concepts, but were simply a consequence of his lack of money to buy new canvasses. Instead, the artist resorted to painted canvasses - pictures from the flea market. They were cheaper to buy. more »

Rather than expressing something directly, the force of artistic expressivity lies within manifesting the getting-to-talk within the work itself.

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„I will now reveal the secret: I am talking about an important artist“ (Christian Ludwig Attersee)

Random. Clean Cuts. The works of the new series by the artist Alexander Steinwendtner contain an essential and fascinating quality of human endeavour, referred to as making art: precise artistic expression arises stems from an artistic attunement, not quite definable and therefore not attainable in an exact manner.

In other words, the artist is able to specify what falls to him and that art is not simply mastered, but in fact created. Quality, says Alexander Steinwendtner, arises from a time that he is somewhat unable to define. Therefore the artistic agenda is to venture into the undefined, in order to reach the concept. more »

Polanszky shows that perceptions do not simply happen within us, but in fact are performed by us – producing reciprocal dynamics. Rudolf Polanszky is an artist of Gallery Konzett, Vienna.

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“The human being forgets that it was him who produced the images in order to use them to find his bearings. He is unable to decipher them anymore and from then on lives in function of his own images: imagination has turned into hallucination.” (Vilem Flusser)

Polanszky’s works resemble a language und avail themselves of a sequence or composition of signs and symbols, but without directly reverting to concepts and without giving a direction to the relationship between cause and effect, leaving open which one is cause and which one effect. Reality as a principle is replaced by the performance of reality, including our capacities and mechanisms of representation and interpretation. more »

„The 1960ies: a fantastic modern“ in the MUSA Vienna reveals the spirit of a decade marked by radical upheaval, along the way the entire who’s who of Austrian art is displayed.

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Not only in politics, also in the domain of the arts the 1960ies were a decade of worldwide upheaval, the radical changes can also be retraced in the Austrian art scene of that period. At the beginning of the decade, art became in many cases more political and provocative in its statements, drawing on subjects in between the realities of the mundane and the artistic. The convergence of high culture and popular culture has its beginnings in these movements, followed by a fundamental challenge to the previous notion of art. 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 »

Wien Energie Fernwärme adds selected works by Erwin Wurm to its collection.
Erwin Wurm is one of the most important contemporary Austrian artists; his works have been exhibited in eminent international art fairs.

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The “one minute sculptures” he has been producing since the late 1990ies belong to his most famous works. These “sculptures” exist for a minute and are performed either by the spectators or the artist himself, involving elements and actions that are often comical: Balancing objects on their heads or having pens stuck between the toes, in postures impossible to maintain for a longer time. The classical properties of a sculpture are thus presented in a new, grotesque and parodic manner. These ephemeral episodes are documented by video and photography. more »