The 1999 exhibition programme is characterized by a highly diverse and discerning engagement with the present and the relations between art, society and politics. The question and call for relevancy to asserted social realities and conditions could be described as a theme frequently recurring in exhibition projects. In keeping with the Statutes of 1897 and the founding members' programmatic statement "To the Time its Art, to Art its Freedom" the exhibition programme of the Secession is chosen by a democratic decision of the Board of the Artists' Association of the same name, which is currently composed of the following artists: Matthias Herrmann (President), Brigitte Kowanz, Constanze Ruhm, Manfred Erjautz, Johanna Kandl, Martin Walde, Heimo Zobernig, Matta Wagnest, Anna Meyer, Willi Kopf, Stefan Sandner. The choice of exhibition projects is rooted in the fundamental concern of the Secession Artists' Association to present current international developments and positions in contemporary art as well as to reflect a readiness to experiment. A total of 15 exhibitions will take place in the exhibition spaces of the Secession building (Main Hall, Gallery, Graphic Arts Cabinet). A catalogue will be published to coincide with each show.



RENÉE GREEN
February 10 - April 11, 1999


Renée Green, Transfer/Übertragen,1996. Gallery Christian Nagel, Cologne. Photo: Andrea Stappert

Renée Green's work are among the most relentless and consequent attempts to explore and extend the traditional terrain of art and to use artistic production as a strategy to question meanings and how we exist. In contrast to many other artists of her generation, however, she diverges from the usual practice of a simple transfiguration of contents (sociology as art, etc.) by including in her videos, installations, sculptures and texts many kinds of models for discerning knowledge and in turn alludes to the tensions between them and their relative status. Irony, humour and seriousness accompany the images which emerge from a complex web of associations which circulate between the past, present and imaginings of the future.
Renée Green was born in Cleveland Ohio and lives in New York and Vienna.


PIERRE HUYGHE
April 28 - June 13, 1999


Snow White Lucie, 1998, S-16mm

In his cinematic works, Pierre Huyghe (born in Paris in 1962) deals with the imaginative qualities of film and how it relates to the perception of reality. Pierre Huyghe engages with artistic and subjective experiences gathered from movies, transposing them into the context of every-day life. Inter alia, films such as Hitchcock's "Rear Window" or Disney's "Snow White" serve as the basis for this constructed works as he looks into questions such as "What if everybody could consider him/herself an actor/actress in his/her own life? What if we could confront real events and situations as though they were film sets and conceive of reality as film?..."


BARBARA HOLUB
April 28 - June 13, 1999


Barbara Holub, Mit vorgehaltener Hand, 1999

Using the different angles underlying the perception of adults and children, Barbara Holub's exhibition project explores the (adult) longing for the innocence of the child.
In her works Barbara Holub, born in Stuttgart in 1959, engages with anthropological questions which have a major influence on what is public, and on communication.


OCTAVIAN TRAUTTMANNSDORFF
April 28 - June 13, 1999


Octavian Trauttmansdorff, 27,9%

With such strategies as displacing every art trend and playfully including a contradiction in every artistic concept, Octavian Trauttmansdorff (born in 1965 in Vienna) can maintain an important position within his own generation of artists.
He refers both to the anti-institutional, media-oriented installation art of the '90s and to the Austrian tradition of artists like Franz West or Heimo Zobernig, whom he exploits as a further subversion.


GREG LYNN / FABIAN MARCACCIO
June 30 - August 8, 1999


Greg Lynn/Fabian Marcaccio, Secession, 1999

Greg Lynn's and Fabian Marcaccio's joint project considers itself a re-definition of architecture and visual art. Cooperating in a way similar to Richard Meier and Donald Judd, whose works create "ideal" space in a merging of sculpture and architecture, the architect Greg Lynn and the painter Fabian Marcaccio develop an alternative way of occupying space by a fusion of different categories, such as iconography and topography, resulting in an urban environment. The project at the Secession encompasses all these territories and thus enables a complex social and interdisciplinary exchange between them. Greg Lynn, born in Vermilion, Ohio, in 1964, and Fabian Marcaccio, born at Rosario de Santa Fe, Argentina, in 1963, live and work in New York.

GITTE VILLESEN
June 30 - August 8, 1999


Gitte Villesen, Ingeborg the Busker Queen

In simple and unpretentious pictures Gitte Villesen's video works tell stories of every-day life and the personal and social circumstances of people she is acquainted with. The videos never infringe upon the personal integrity and dignity of those portrayed. Much rather do they document the personalities of people who are able to create some leeway for themselves in the humdrum of every-day needs and routine chores as they enjoy their own playfulness and imagination. The videos were produced in her home town and in Copenhagen, where Gitte Villesen lives and works. Villesen always portrays friends, such as Willi or Ingeborg, in a very unobtrusive and sensitive way, and their pondering of life, personal memories and feelings become the theme of the video works. Gitte Villesen was born at Ansager, Denmark, in 1965.


LUCY ORTA
June 23 - August 1, 1999


Lucy Orta, Nexus Architecture, Uyuni Salt Desert, Bolivia, 1997

Lucy Orta's projects and interventions provoke questions for the positioning of art. How can artistic and social reflections be justified if their outcomes have no impact on society? Lucy Orta's works identify deficits and discordance in social reality without offering comprehensive solutions and simple responses. The contextual framework of her projects is never fully detached from the field of art, thus evoking the call for relevancy and responsibility in artistic production. Lucy Orta, born in 1966, lives and works in Paris.



STEVEN BROWER, URS FREI, KENDELL GEERS, ANNIKA STRÖM
Exhibition initiated by Martin Walde
August 20 - September 26, 1999

One specific feature that distinguishes the Secession from other international exhibition venues is that artists invite other artists here. This practice is also at the roots of the exhibition project initiated and put together by Martin Walde. Departing from the Secession's usual curatorial praxis to show different positions of artists at the same time in separate spaces, no predetermined spaces will be assigned to the individual artists this time. It will be up to the artists themselves to make arrangements in the exhibition spaces and other rooms of the Secession and to enter into a critical dialogue with one another-no influence will be exerted by the curator or the institution. The project is neither conceived of as a curated exhibition nor based on specific thematic ambitions. All it aims at is to invalidate the institutional rules of the game for a brief period of time.


STEVEN BROWER
August 20 - September 26, 1999


Steven Brower, Utility, 1999

Steven Brower's objects are architectural sculptures following laws of their own. They claim to be independent while they occasionally use the infrastructure found at the exhibition venue just the same, imitating it in a miniature version and frequently reducing the original to absurdity by targeted changes and deviations. Thus, Steven Brower's objects create a new entity incorporating the exhibition space as a significant criterion of artistic intervention as they directly refer to it.
Steven Brower, born in 1969, lives and works in New York City.


URS FREI
August 20 - September 26, 1999


Urs Frei in San Staë

Urs Frei creates hybrid objects from the packaging waste of commercial products that have become unusable - bags, wood or plastic crates, boards, cardboard boxes - and other things from the context of every-day life. They bespeak accumulation, constriction, dispersal, playful mobility and shape-conscious construction.
Painted in many colours or subdued monochromes, they form humble or bulky body-like shapes stacked up along walls, lying on the floor or hanging from the ceiling as amorphous convolutions. Due to their abstract form and arbitrariness, they are not only comments on the calculus of intention and control, but also on the irony of rational art production.
Urs Frei was born in 1958, he lives and works in Zurich.


KENDELL GEERS
June 20 - August 1, 1999


Kendell Geers, Mandela Mask, 1996

In the works he produced in the past few years, Kendell Geers, born in 1968, deals with the question as to how ethics and aesthetics relate. In this connection, he frequently uses images from every-day life and objects from urban reality, radically transforming and completely alienating these from their original context. His works can be read as provocative formulations critical of institutional art and as such, they call for a new kind of engagement with art.
Kendell Geers lives and works in Johannesburg, South Africa.


ANNIKA STRÖM
June 20 - August 1, 1999


Annika Ström, fern skäl (five reasons), video, 33 seconds, 1999

Annika Ström, born in Helsingborg, Sweden, in 1964, investigates her position as an artist in a subtle and humourous way. This is also reflected in the titles of her video projections and installations, such as "Artist Film" (1996), "The Artist Live" (1997), or "Grant" (1998-99). Since 1998 she has been producing series of songs, little stories on the myth of the artist. When presenting the video work "The First Song of Seven" (1998), Annika Ström also arranged a live performance in which the main character appeared personally, simultaneously performing the song for the audience. In this work, as in many others, Annika Ström is questioning the visual presentation of art and the role of the recipient in the emergence of artistic work in a contemporary medium.


ROMAN SIGNER
October 7 - November 18, 1999


Roman Signer, Helicopter, 1999, Photo: Niklaus Stauss

The working method of Roman Signer, born 1938 in Appenzell, is characterized by current sculptural thinking and existential experience reflected in the way he experiments with space and time, with dematerialization and processual qualities. Based on the processual notion of sculpture of the sixties and seventies, Roman Signer considers the events he stages as the relics of transformations. The objects, installations, films and photographs operate through an awareness of the difference between what is specifically perceptible and the withdrawal or loss of perception, between visuality and thought. They refer to the transformation of physical energy as a result of a process. In this context, water, fire and air are often the basic substances which are used to represent plastic developments such as burning, melting away, exploding and other changes in states of aggregation.


UDO WID
October 7 - November 18, 1999


Urs Wid, Are there personal-specific parameters in the EEG?, 1994, Foto: Hans Wimmer

Since the seventies, Udo Wid has been a "one-man institution" claiming to belong to the fields of science and art alike. The results of his examinations in neuro-physiology are derived from an unconventional combination of elitist knowledge obtained from scientific research and free artistic experiments. These examinations sometimes produce surprising scientific results and simultaneously turn out to be new aesthetic discoveries of images. Udo Wid was born in Vienna in 1944.


JOHANNA KANDL
December 3, 1999 - January 16, 2000


Johanna Kandl, o.t. 30x40, Temp/Holz, 1998

Johanna Kandl's projects link different levels of reality, thus processing the relations between art, society and politics. In doing so, Johanna Kandl does not primarily deal with the context of her artistic practice but the perception of reality via art; she considers her work as research and analysis. Image and language are juxtaposed, realism evolves from the tension between picture and text. The scenarios she has experienced herself are about various realities of life, the difference between one's own life and society's expectations, the longing for happiness. Since 1997, Johanna Kandl has returned to increasingly devoting herself to painting which develops in connection with her research, travels and cooperative projects. Johanna Kandl was born in 1954 and lives in Vienna.


ANN-SOFI SIDÉN
December 3 - January 16, 2000


Ann-Sofi Sidén, Who told the chamber maid?, 1998

Vulnerability and disclosure, control or supervision are themes recurring in the work of Swedish artist Ann-Sofi Sidén.
The archive which the artist created of the traces left by a mentally ill female psychiatrist, subsequently presented in installations for exhibitions in New York, Stockholm or Graz, or the artist's public appearances as the mystical figure "QM" (Queen of Mud) bespeak her fundamental interest in the human psyche.
Ann-Sofi Sidén war born in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1962, and lives in New York.

 
 
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: +43-1-5875307-21, Fax: +43-1-5875307-34
presse@secession.at