In 1867 Gustav Klimt and a group of 18 other artists left the Künstlerhaus to protest against its conservative exhibition programme and formed the "Association of Visual Artists - Vienna Secession". In the spring of 1898 the association opened its first exhibition, thus formulating a programme that reflected their will to an entirely new, modern notion of art. Against this historical backdrop, the exhibition "A Century of Artistic Freedom - 100 Years Secession " curated by Robert Fleck will deal with the insights, influences and effects originating from an exhibition practice which has exclusively been devoted to contemporary international art for a hundred years now.

In keeping with the programme devised by its founding members, the Secession premises will house a total of ten exhibitions in 1998, all showing current international developments and positions in contemporary art. The artists were invited to present mainly new works specially conceived for the Secession. A catalogue in German and English will be published to coincide with each exhibition.

The exhibition programme of 1998 was created by the board of the Artists' Association, which is composed of the following artists:
Werner Würtinger (President), Erwin Bohatsch, Manfred Erjautz, Inge Graf, Matthias Herrmann, Johanna Kandl, Peter Kogler, Willi Kopf, Brigitte Kowanz, Margherita Spiluttini, Martin Walde, Erwin Wurm.



MARCUS GEIGER
January 30 - March 15, 1998


Marcus Geiger, Wealth of Nations, Warschau, 1991

In his artistic interventions of the past few years Marcus Geiger, born at Muri, Switzerland, in 1957, dealt with conceptual experiments involving the notion of the "artwork". His installations of coloured terry cloth and felt, of objects purporting to be artworks by renowned twentieth-century artists assign an ambivalent place in between object for daily use and work of art to the "artwork", keeping experiential options that prevent any unambiguous reading open for the beholder. The show at the Secession will engage with the centenary of the institution. Marcus Geiger constitutes his work within and against the grain of this context, expanding it to form a functional, "painterly" installation.


ELISABETH GRÜBL
January 30 - March 15, 1998


Elisabeth Grübl, Installation Vertikaljalousien in Verbindung mit einem Bewegungsmelder, 1996

Elisabeth Grübl's artistic engagement focuses on space. In subtle interventions probing the area at the boundary between architecture and sculpture, Elisabeth Grübl interferes with given interior and exterior spaces, designing space installations reminiscent of Minimal Art which assign to the beholder a dual function of recipient and object of the installation. Elisabeth Grübl was born in Tamsweg, province of Salzburg, in 1961 and studied with Bruno Gironcoli at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts.


"A CENTURY OF ARTISTIC FREEDOM - 100 YEARS SECESSION"
April 3 - June 21, 1998


Daniel Faust, Inside and Around, 1993

On the occasion of its centenary, the Secession will organise a major transhistorical exhibition in which the "century of artistic freedom" will pass in review in quick motion. The show will present the Secession as the oldest existing institution in the world specially devoted to exhibitions of modern art. Masterpieces of modernism which were shown at the Secession earlier will be exhibited again and juxtaposed with most recent contemporary art. At the end of the century, it seems indicated to demonstrate the scope of artistic thinking today and the underlying unity of modernism. The exhibition, curated by Robert Fleck, will be organised along similar lines as the "International Art Exhibitions" which were typical of the first decades of the Secession, showing about 280 works by 130 artists dating from the early days up to the present. Extraordinary loans from private and public collections have been obtained, reflecting the high international profile of the Secession anniversary.


JUNGE SZENE
July 8 - August 30, 1998


Junge Szene, 1998

Since 1983, the Secession has used its exhibition series "Junge Szene" (Young Scene) to present the positions and viewpoints of young artists who are hardly known to the art audience or not established in the art world. Conceived as a project that aims at the identification of new trends in art, the "Young Scene" series confined itself to exclusively presenting Austrian artists in the past few years. The 1998 show will take into account that current artistic projects and developments are characterised by networking and internationalisation, for which reason works by international artists will also be featured.


MIKE KELLEY/PAUL McCARTHY
September 11 - November 8, 1998


Mike Kelley/Paul McCarthy, Fresh Acconci, 1995

Mike Kelley (born in Detroit in 1954) and Paul McCarthy (born in Salt Lake City in 1945) interpret elements from contemporary pop culture in their works. They incorporate various forms of expression from comic strips, music and the cinema in their projects, expanding these by performances and installation stagings. For the Secession the two American artists are planning an installation which is to involve all the exhibition spaces in the building. Apart from earlier works which emerged from joint projects, the show will also present the most recent works produced by the artists both together and individually.


FABIO ZOLLY
Summer/Autumn 1999


Fabio Zolly, Subway, N.Y. (Video), 1997

The search for characteristic urban features is typical of the oeuvre of Fabio Zolly, born at Spittal an der Drau, province of Carinthia, in 1955. In Fabio Zolly's works shadows of airplanes and urban objects caught on film, x-rays of suitcases or pictures of manhole covers from all around the world refer to the mobility of our society. They are symbols of a transitory existence between places and the way they are perceived. At the Secession Fabio Zolly will show a selection of his most recent videos.


MARC ADRIAN
November 18, 1998 - January 17, 1999


Marc Adrian, Doppelgesicht (Doppelbelichtung), 1969, Photo: Moucle Blackout

Marc Adrian, born in Vienna in 1930, has been experimenting with a variety of artistic media since the fifties. He is specially interested in the problems of visual semantics in pictures, objects, texts and films. The Secession will show a selection of Marc Adrian's films, which evoke a process of active reception due to alienation effects including manipulated colours, discontinuous editing or fragmented language. Marc Adrian's works respond to contemporary artistic tendencies and in retrospect, they sometimes turn out to be ahead of their times. For example, his films from the early fifties and sixties reveal traces "in which the dimension of time is brought to bear on minimalist space structures which were sought in the visual arts at the time" (T. Rothschild).


HERBERT BRANDL
November 20, 1998 - January 17, 1999

Herbert Brandl is the most important Austrian representative of a generation of painters whose artistic work extends beyond a pure discourse of painting. Context, minimalism and arte povera are contained in his work process. Figure and abstraction are no central themes any more, traditional motives such as landscapes, flowers, figures or the "abstract painting" are used as supporting devices to position and to question his medium in the world. Even though the paintings venture into the realm of pure beauty, they still contain hidden texts which point to the covered and to history.


MICHAEL ZINGANEL
November 20, 1998 - January 17, 1999


Michael Zinganel, Morning Walks, 1997

Michael Zinganel, born at Bad Radkersburg in 1960, engaged with architectural (space) installations in the late eighties. Sculptures reduced to pure forms, usually combined with videos, became interventions in existing spatial situations, attempting to show the conditioning of our perception. These installations have increasingly been replaced by participatory projects identifying the artist as an architect critical of society and acting at a political level. Again, he is interested in architecture as well as its social and historical environment. Not only do Michael Zinganel's most recent works critique modernist planning methods in theoretical terms, the artist also puts his critical ideas into practice in specific social interventions.


ROBERT LETTNER
November 20, 1998 - January 17, 1999


Robert Lettner, Aus der Serie I, 1996

In his quest for current forms of realism in painting, Robert Lettner, born at Elne, Southern France, in 1943, is interested in the representation of socio-political themes and the analysis of image production. In his latest works, his attempt to read plein air painting as structure succeeded insofar as he had his spontaneous drawings, created in an outdoor setting, processed by digital technology. The fusion of an organic process, drawing, which depends on psychological states and artistic skills, with an inorganic medium, the computer, resulted in the works Robert Lettner will present in his exhibition at the Secession under the title "Pictures about Magical Geometry". The tableaux measuring approximately 2 x 2.5 metres were digitally printed in co-operation with Peter Kainz and Walter Worlitschek.

 
 
PERMANENT EXHIBITION
Gustav Klimt: THE BEETHOVEN FRIEZE
 
 
 
For further information and photographic material please contact:
 
Pia Leydolt
Secession, Association of Visual Artists Vienna Secession
Friedrichstraße 12, 1010 Vienna
Tel: +43-1-5875307-10, Fax: +43-1-5875307-34
E-mail: presse@secession.at