The curators of the Architekturzentrum Wien, Sonja Pisarik and Ute Waditschatka, make an expedition through the world of post-war architecture in Austria. A retrospective covering 20 years of the projects of the “arbeitsgruppe 4“.

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”We never wanted to overthrow tradition, but rather build on it”. In retrospect, when Wilhelm Holzbauer emphasizes the idea of building on tradition as a central aspect of arbeitsgruppe 4, one becomes aware of the timeframe and circumstances of their development. The post-war period, characterized by financial hardship and the reconstruction of the country, more »

Constantin Luser challenges us to enter the maze of his imagination: he corners us against the wall of our indifference and confronts us with the unavoidable question whether we will ever be able to escape. But escape what? A portrait.

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In any case, it tames the wildness of our thinking, which means that when it happens –ever so rarely- the hegemony of the concept is erased and for a moment we are cured of our illness separating us from time – our rationality. more »

Prinz Eugen, as he is known in Austria, was a renowned lover and collector of art and left a vast collection of paintings, copper engravings, books and hand writings. He became one of the most influential Austrians of his time when he moved to the country after being rejected by Louis XIV for service in the French army.

As a commander he was a daredevil, willing to sacrifice human lives by the thousands and considered a military genius by his contemporaries, but at the same time a generous patron willing to spend his enormous wealth on his collections, as if his military strategy had a counterpart in his thinking.

Two of the exhibition’s sub-headings, “general” and “art-lover” being self-evident, “philosopher” remains to be proven. Certainly the prince kept correspondence with great intellectuals of his time and his passion for the sciences were a foreboding of the age of enlightenment.

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His interest lay mainly with the profane sciences. Eugene’s collector passion was different from his baroque contemporaries. He did not collect for the sake of representation or to collect rarities but out of a quest for knowledge and genuine passion for the sciences.

The philosopher Leibniz, who had entertained the idea of opening an academy of sciences in Vienna, a project which the prince was supportive of, but which eventually was abandoned, had personally dedicated a manuscript of his work outlining his philosophy of monadology, “Principes de la nature et de la grace fondés en raison” which the prince is known to have held in great esteem.

The prince had managed to put together a collection of 15000 printed works, 237 precious manuscripts, 290 volumes with etchings, and 250 cassettes with portraits in the years between 1712 and 1736. Of particular interest were books on natural history and geography. While his library “Bibliotheca Eugeniana”, prints and drawings were purchased by the Emperor Karl VI in 1737, from his heiress Princess Victoria of Savoy-Carignan -who had never met him and at once decided to sell everything- most of the artwork was bought by Charles Emmanuel III of Sardinia.

On of the most spectacular features being the 15 original paintings on loan for this exhibition and back to Vienna for the first time since the prince’s death, there will also be busts, suits of armour, sabers and other arms, tents, drapery and more items illustrating his era.

An interesting aspect is the cultural exchange with the Habsburgs enemies of the times, the Ottomans, as seen in little items of the show and elaborated in the catalogue, like fashion fads “alla turcha” in Europe or baroque-inspired architecture in the Ottoman Empire.

The exhibition remains strictly in this age though, and there is no reference to contemporary views on politics, arts and history of reception of the era.

This podcast was realised with the kind support of UNIQUA ArtCercles. The exhibiton can be seen till the 6th of June 2010 at the Orangerie and Lower Belvedere.

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, provided that she can give significance to the appearance of what she consumes. A meal is prepared in such a way that the colors are preserved: it is decorated and then covered up, then the lid comes off, and voila!—it is presented and celebrated. A sensual feast for the eyes either increasingly whets our appetite, or, especially if the display appears too alive, or too obviously dead, invokes a sudden sense of nausea.

A meal that is visually prepared not only informs us of the quality of the food. This view is also far more accessible on a symbolic level than it would be, for example, through our noses or palates. Our view readily contributes something, it directs our attention to something, it attributes a quality to the food that it previously did not possess. When the food is prepared in a way that makes it visually enticing, then it is also likely that something additional to the food is being served, or brought in front of our eyes to see. Lamb, rabbit, wine, salt, bread: these subjects are obviously not only about meals and consumption. The accessibility of the view to symbolic and narrative aspects of, and not only just to, the object, is also reflected in artistic representations of food, especially in the form of still lifes.

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A pheasant on a small wood inlay table next to a lobster, surrounded by silver bowls full of fresh citrus fruits: potentially edible items are shown here, but it’s probably more about the representation of wealth. For a long time, the representation of edible items was embedded into a religious context and its iconography. As a result, the apple was not only thought of as being a russet, Grafensteiner, or Granny Smith, it also served as a reminder of temptation and its consequences for humanity.

Beautifully presented food arouses the desire to just reach out and grab it: these foods represent wealth, indulgence, and exclusivity—qualities which can also be found in the baroque vanitas still life. But that which looks fresh and fruity at first glance appears old, shriveled, and close to death and decay upon the second view. In the vanitas still life, those who indulge in this feast for the eyes are served their existential just desserts in the end. The ripe fruits are already at the peak of their beauty, but from this point on, they can only go downhill. Distrust of desire, which is fleeting and enticing, comes into the picture – a meal that is served as a reminder of perishability and death.

The representation of food in art does not always have a narrative. The concentration of the still life artists on that which formerly only served as decoration provided them the freedom in other representations to work on an emerging visual language, independent of symbolic statements and narratives. Onions on a sideboard, or a bunch of asparagus - the less meaning the object possessed, the less the artist and art had to serve as ambassadors for matters which had nothing to with painting.

In the presentation of food, the refusal of the artist to be mistreated as ambassadors of something which lies beyond art has been noted. However, the represented meal is more often an indication of the themes of the respective time: its religious messages, its morals, its inequalities. The meal that is presented artistically for the eye is a warning against imprudent assimilation, against thoughtless imbibing. Instead, it demands thoughtfulness and clearly expresses, or hides a criticism of, gender relations, the pursuit of wealth, a bias towards beauty.

Visual treats to be devoured with the eyes: such is the theme of the exhibition called “Augenschmaus: A Feast for the Eyes – Food in Still Life” at Bank Austria Kunstforum. On display are principal works from the representation of food from the sixteenth century to the present, works ranging from Arcimboldo, Aertsen, Van Gogh, Cézanne, Picasso, Braque, to Hirst, Lassnig, and others, gathered from over sixty lenders. The exhibition will run from February 10th to May 30th. In this episode, the expert commentary on Augenschmaus is provided by Heike Eipeldauer, the curator of the exhibition, as well as Christian Petz, one of the best and most awarded chefs in Austria.

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Esra Ersen is interested in the formation of identity and its transformation in different contexts or power structures. Her work “Carousel” shown in the exhibition tanzimat (Augarten Contemporary 21.1.2010 - 16.5.2010) was produced with high school students from Cologne. Ersen asked the students to model Turkish heads out of clay.

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Gulsun Karamustafa is a contemporary artist and film maker from Turkey. In 2009 she was the artist in residence at the Augarten Contemporary in Vienna. For the exhibition tanzimat (Augarten Contemporary 21.1.2010 - 16.5.2010) she produced a new piece entitled “modernity unveiled/interweaving histories”. In the interview with CYA Karamustafa talks about this piece.

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Franz Kapfer is an artist from Austria. His interest lies in patterns of representation.
In his work “Trophies” in exhibition tanzimat (Augarten Contemporary 21.1.2010 - 16.5.2010) he examines cliché representations of Turkish motives in Austrian architecture.

Since the beginning of 2008, Open Space, the Center for Art Projects, has been in full swing in the Vienna art world with its ambitious program. Open Space’s repertoire of exploring artistic variety and multilayeredness corresponds to its self-conception as an open space for international networking. Under the direction of Gulsen Bal, Open Space has realised a marathon of exhibitions with a density of international participation that is unusual for Vienna.

Last year the art space opened in Lassingleithnerplatz in Taborstreet with an exhibition curated by the Vienna-based artist, Fatih Aydogdu. Aydogdu, who artistically feels at home somewhere between the categories of installation, video, graphic art, and music, and who also had boundary experiences in his life as a geopolitically sensitized migrant, made the boundary signal the conceptual starting point of his interdiscplinary exhibition.

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Ten artists and artist collectives followed the request of the theme of the boundary signal. CastYourArt visited the exhibition at Open Space recording sounds as fields of experimentation and boundary signals beyond the act of speaking and music, as well as artistic positionings emerging from historically political moments in relation to current events. (wh/jn)

Beauty. Order. Cleanliness. Purity. Perfection. To all of these coveted qualities, hair is a threat, a flaw, a disturbance. When someone is well-groomed, we describe them as “not having a hair on her head out of place”, signifying that hair is something to be put into its place, to be kept under control. There are many places where hair is not supposed to be: stuck on your sweater, floating in your soup, appearing on a projected film frame, beyond the acceptable areas and lengths on one’s body, etc. And so, when we are confronted with its appearance in a work of art, we are unsure: do the same rules apply here? Should I be delighted or disgusted? As always, the use of unconventional materials in art forces us to make up our own minds.

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In her art work, Fiene Scharp, based in Berlin, works regularly with materials such as hair, grease, and wax. She describes her focus as being “the moment of touching in which the touch-er and the touch-ee become aware of themselves and the other.” In a primarily visual context such as art exhibitions, touching is often forbidden, but perception is not. Scharp’s use of hair challenges these boundaries by placing the viewer in a position somewhere between attraction and repulsion. A 100-cm cube composed completely of human hair somehow knocks our perception for a loop: questions arise as to from where the hair originated and whether it is too much while, at the same time, impulses are suppressed to reach out and stroke it. Otherwise conventional forms such as delicate weaves or graphs on paper shock us when we realize that they are made of hairs. Carefully placed hairs on ordinary food items such as butter or a lemon provoke us with their violation of propriety.

Scharp uses the video format to bring her fixation with capturing this complicated relation to the sense of touch to the next level. Tiny hairs between an index finger and thumb bristle audibly as they act as a barrier between their contact on one video, two hands slowly polish a rough sheet of ice into a smooth, reflective surface in another. Although we as viewers are still limited in our access to the works to the senses of sight and sound, the sense of touch is the focus, and, once again, cannot be taken for granted. For this purpose, Scharp refers to another all-too-human material, skin, which she describes as “a metaphor for the state of being separate, as well as a membrane.” References to hair and skin confront us with our own corporeality and challenge us to place such normally mundane materials in a new context, not only in art, but in life as well. (jn)

Irene Andessner began her career with painting. She first studied with Emilio Vedova, one of the most important Italian Informal painters, at the Academia di Belli Arti in Venice, and then with Max Weiler and Arnulf Rainer—also a representative of the Informal—at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. Andessner encountered paintings by the Italian Renaissance painter, Sofonisba Anguissola, for the first time at an exhibition at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. The self-portraits fascinated her, and after an attempt to paint herself as Anguissola, she turned to the fields of photography and video art, in which she explores contemporary forms of the self-dramatization.

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Andessner’s portrait works are revivals of historical personalities that utilize memory as a source of reactivation: Marlene Dietrich, Electress Dorothea of Brandenburg, Wanda von Sacher Masoch, Irene Harand, Barbara Strozzi, Hedy Lamarr, Ida Pfeiffer, Maria Sibylle Merian, Barbara Blomberg, Gwen John, Constanze Mozart, Angelika Kaufmann, Frida Kahlo. The artist portrays over fifty personalities, primarily women, through role performance. The selection of her protagonists follows strict criteria: they are strong and politically involved women who were inventive, creative, aggressive, intelligent, and remarkable, who made an impression through their personalities or their approaches to life, however, often enough to be displaced into the lower and hidden ranks behind a male-dominated world and historiography.

Andessner is interested in how women have dealt with themselves throughout various centuries. In order to develop this approach, she investigates the life of her subjects, seeks out portraits of them, and then selects one of these picture-worthy moments as a starting point for her artistic embodiments. Through the conversion, the artist reflects on the models as social figures, as fictions of women as holy, untouchable superstars, as suffering, dominating, or promiscuous, and reenacts them partly faithfully, and partly as a reinterpretation with materials from our own time.

Andessner’s self-dramatizations take place either in the studio or in photographic situations that are recognizable as sets. Large polaroids are taken there. According to Andessner, the material was always important to her, since she also wanted to take a painterly approach to photography, which the polaroid material makes possible. When her self-dramatizations are done as videos, they also have a performative character and integrate others into the revivification.
When the artist mixes among people as Ursula K.—a scarred, depressed woman—in suburban bars, laundromats, and public saunas, or, in the live-streaming project, “Maternoster”, rides up and down the traveling lift compartments in a paternoster in the headquarters of the Federation of Austrian Industry with heads of business as Alma Mater, Maria von Nazareth, Mutter Courage (Anna Fierling), and Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone, she approaches these self-dramatizations as real performances. Her restaged self then becomes evident through actual existing circumstances and thereby eliminates the boundaries of who she is. (wh/jn)