Platz da! Consensus or conflict? The exhibition in the Architekturzentrum Wien has a definite answer: both

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The production of space is a central aspect of capitalist economy. The urbanist development has reached great importance within the dynamics of capital accumulation. Be it the privatization of areas, the new forms of mobile communication, the changes in urban space, or the disappearance of the café as agora of political life and debates, the confrontation of ideas in public space is getting increasingly scarce. In order to decode the new usages of public space, the exhibition “Platz da!” delivers an analysis of the relation public-private that is constitutive for the form and sense of public spaces in contemporary cities. more »

Public space is both a battlefield and stage for those visions and ideas in which a society puts its faith. At a distance, it also discloses that which is blindly supported in this society. One can survey it as if it were a kind of societal relief, or a contemporary witness of history, as it reveals both conscious and unconscious orders and structures.

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In those times when the common faith in ideas is particularly strong, signs of this faith are placed into public space in the form of monuments which make beliefs concrete to us, alert us of the destructive power of faith, and signal the successful displacement of other beliefs. more »

A grid-like strut frame, constructed out of several vertical and horizontal aluminum rods, stands in the space, and is held both together and upright by means of a chaotic network of wide black rubber bands with no visible beginning or end. The sculpture conveys a precarious stability, based on workings of gravity, traction, pressure, and friction. Bringing attention to the forces that constitute a work is a central concern of the artist, Michael Kienzer. Through the methods of interlacing, interweaving, and extensive tension, he creates links, references, connections between things and materials, and thereby reveals the fact that it is not the elements themselves, but the mutual relations between the elements—what is formed in between—that represents the character of a work.

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Kienzer completed his degree at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Graz and the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, where he studied sculpture under Bruno Gironcoli. For his work—which has received numerous awards, among them the Monsignore Otto Mauer Award—he uses various media; for objects, installations, and designs, he takes different approaches to themes such as space, time, surface, compression, materiality, image, and the original. His sculptural interventions are mostly site-specific, working within the means of a given space. For example, in a lapidary fashion, two aluminum plates are set up straight across a space, supported only by themselves and the walls, drawing attention to the physical forces at work, therby shifting them, and changing the viewer’s perspective of the structures, which at first appear unalterable. more »

At the ripe old age of 35, Francisca Benitez calls herself a “retired architect”. When the Chilean-born artist first arrived in New York ten years earlier, her experience as an architect permanently shaped her view of the city. What she imagined as a creative, intellectually challenging profession, turned out to be an exercise in municipal bureaucracy—much of her work was about interpreting building codes and zoning restrictions, cutting through administrative red tape, and facing the challenges of a complex system of rules, regulations, and protocol.

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All of these obstacles, however, only served to further inform her unique perspective and conception of a sprawling urban landscape. She found that her attention was more and more drawn to those dimensions and spaces around her that may be overlooked, or taken for granted. Informed and inspired by her heroes, Gordon Matta-Clark and Ed Ruscha, she never lost sight of the bigger (or smaller) picture—that the jurisdiction of boundaries, lines, and interactions was a process that was constantly being defined, whether the results followed the modus operandi or not. more »

To put surfaces into the spatial. To construct three-dimensionality which we in turn flatten under our gaze. The transference of the spatial into the visual and vice versa - which opens up possibilities of the sculptural - is what fascinates the artist Markus Wilfling.

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For him, it is the conditioned perspective on everyday things which challenge him artistically. With his work, he shakes up our usual perceptions, which are geared towards normalization and from which we habitually expect nothing - for example, in our routines, the daily first morning glimpse into the mirror, the established routes which we follow each day, the handling of objects which we use on a daily basis. more »

One may think that there are not so many sculptresses. The fact is, they have always been around—they were already participating in cathedral workshops of the Middle Ages, however, often anonymously.

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The sculptress, Ulrike Truger, has always positioned herself in the public with her art, in fact, she has often placed herself “in the way”. The difficulty under which the form of a stone is wrought, finds its counterpart in its stability. Tackling the obstinacy of the stone is not only work, it is also a gift, because when a sculptress creates her art, it can then not be so easily removed—neither out of the way nor out of the memory as well. more »