The Secession, founded in 1897, is still managed today by a board of directors made up solely of artists; at present this board comprises: Sabine Bitter, Manfred Erjautz, Matthias Herrmann, Michael Hofstätter, Hans Kupelwieser, Marko Lulic, Dorit Margreiter, Anna Meyer, Florian Pumhösl, Constanze Ruhm, Sofie Thorsen, Martin Walde, Hans Weigand and Heimo Zobernig. The board decides democratically and independently on the artistic program of this exhibition space, the oldest in the world to be dedicated exclusively to international contemporary art. To a great extent, the board acts in accordance with the programmatic ideal of its founders, Der Zeit ihre Kunst, der Kunst ihre Freiheit (For every time its art. For art its Freedom.) The unusual directorship model stands for openness with respect to new developments, readiness to experiment and awareness of the complexity of contemporary art. The 2004 program attempts to go beyond medial, geographical and contextual barriers and provide a broadly based while at the same time in-depth view of contemporary fine arts and their interrelations with society and politics. In 2004, there will be a total of 12 exhibitions at the Secession (main room, gallery, graphics showcase), each accompanied by a German / English publication.



BODY DISPLAY Performative Installation #4
Feb. 19 – Apr. 18, 2004


Victor Alimpiev & Marian Zhunin, Ode, 2003

Body Display is an exhibition that conceives the body as a projection surface for discursive identity politics.
Aber ICH BIN DOCH KEIN FILM!* (But I am not a film!*)
Body Display questions the connections between body and economy.
Die besten Erlebnisse habe ich gekauft.* (The best experiences were the ones I bought?*)
Body Display confronts the interchangeability of spatial / performative and referential / communicative processes.
Dieser Kühlschrank hat ein Display und du hast auch eins.* (This refrigerator has a display and so do you.*)
Body Display discusses aspects of the physical body within a permanent process of transformation, in which there is a constant mutual exchange of information, experience and cultural coding.
Alle leben in Hütten aus Notebooks.* (Everyone lives in huts made of notebooks.*)
Body Display engages in a conflict between presentation and spectacle, between production and consumption, between artist and observer.
Hol dir Deine SINNLICHKEIT AB, KAPITAL!* (Pick up your sensuality, capital!*)
Body Display is interested in the exchange value of bodies and projection.
Dein Gesicht ist eine Geschäftsform, Baby.* (Your face is a business, baby.*)

(*René Pollesch, www-slums, 2003)

Curated by Eva Maria Stadler and Angelika Nollert (Siemens Art Program)
In cooperation with Siemens Arts Program


HENRIK OLESEN
Feb. 19 – Apr. 18, 2004


Henrik Olesen, 1935 1922, 2003

Henrik Olesen is interested in the dispositives of power in society, especially those that criminalize homosexual behavior. He pays particular attention to works of minimal art and conceptual art, such as those by Sol LeWitt or Kenneth Noland, and the macho attitudes ascribed to them. Olesen works on both their aesthetics, which seem historical today, as well as on their specific ideas of space and the relationship between art/the artist and society. He thus describes photos from Vito Acconci's work Adaption Studies - showing the artist at a performance in his studio - using statistics and bold and simple questions about a hetero-sexist society. Particularly in his sculptural works, Olesen questions the relationship between nature and culture and politics, and vice versa, and pleads for a direct exertion of political influence and a critique of what is considered normal.
Henrik Olesen lives and works in Berlin.
The exhibition is supported through Kunststyrelsen, Center for Visual Art


ALOIS MOSBACHER
May 1 – June 20, 2004


Alois Mosbacher, Akemi in Forest, 2003

In his paintings, Alois Mosbacher pays equal attention to painterly issues as he does to the figurations with which he deals. His work displays a constant flux of the painterly gesture, the pictorial language employed, and the material, which all unite surface and content. With its première at the Secession, the new block of works brings together pictorial ideas of imaginary pieces of woodland, fed by different sources (e.g. the Internet, computer games, news, literature) and conveying a romantic and poetic, as well as a gloomy and dangerous vision of the woods. Figurative, graphic precision is juxtaposed with a style of painting that melts, and sometimes literally drips, into abstraction, covering space as well as revealing empty spaces, and citing various styles throughout art history.
Alois Mosbacher lives and works in Vienna.
For their kind support of the exhibition, we would like to thank: Arbeiterkammer Wien
The exhibition is supported by: Amt der Steiermärkischen Landesregierung, Kulturabteilung


CAROLA DERTNIG
May 1 – June 20, 2004


Carola Dertnig, Strangers, 2003

Carola Dertnig's drawings, video works and installations are concerned with the performative content of text - language, images, gestures, etc. - and document these as a process within which roles arise and are articulated. Ways of seeing shaped by feminism as well as the explicit interest in politicizing gender are among the central aspects of her artistic praxis. The narratives often spring from everyday experiences, which are linked to issues of economy and representation in a poetic-critical way. Alongside the history of performance art, the genre of slapstick and the integration of humor and irony provide important methodological reference points. Parallel to her artistic activities, Dertnig has curated numerous exhibitions on performance art and initiated the feminist network a room of one's own.
Carola Dertnig lives and works in Vienna.


BERNHARD FRUEHWIRTH
May 1 – June 20, 2004


Bernhard Fruehwirth, Two Tree, 2003

Drawing is the dominant medium in Bernhard Fruehwirth's work. Whereas his earlier works increasingly concentrated on interiors and living areas, particularly children's rooms, Fruehwirth subsequently expanded the interplay of real and psychical internal and external worlds both thematically as well as formally. Installations, objects and slide projections become equal elements and parallel means of expression for the construction of realities. The multi-faceted motifs integrate biographical events and everyday observations, whereby these primary references become fragmented and thus model-like through distancing processes such as copying, distortions of perspective or material transformations including a fake studio fire in All Burn Down (2002).
Bernhard Fruehwirth lives and works in Vienna.
The exhibition is supported by: Amt der Steiermärkischen Landesregierung, Kulturabteilung


BELGRADE ART INC.
July 1 – Sep. 5, 2004


Zenith, 1921/26

The exhibition introduces Belgrade's contemporary art positions and explores their historical origins and role models. The curator is particularly interested in non-linear moments of upheaval, in which contemporary art production in Belgrade was involved in a close international exchange. Exhibitions such as In Another Moment, initiated by Braco and Nena Dimitrijevi in 1971, with invited artists including Lawrence Wiener, Daniel Buren and Art & Language, are on the one hand an important reference for the subsequent generations and on the other, a rejection of the cliché of an entirely hermetic scene. The exhibition attempts to counter a one-dimensional, monopolizing interpretation with a more complex and emancipated version.

Curated by Stevan Vukovic in cooperation with Marko Lulic.
Artists / Projects: Marina Abramovic, Mrdan Bajic, Braco Dimitrijevic, Mirjana Dordevic, Uros Duric / Elke Krystufek, Miodrag Krkobabic, Mihael Milunovic, Milorad Mladenovic, Mileta Prodanovic, Milica Ruzicic, Skart group, Milica Tomic, kuda.org, Zenith, Rasa Todosijevic
Architecture by: Kühn Malvezzi
The exhibition is supported by: KulturKontakt, Lang & Lang Werbeproduktion, Jat Airways, Mc Shark


CHARLINE VON HEYL
July 1 – Sep. 5, 2004


Charline von Heyl, Untitled, 2003, Courtesy: Collection Melva Bucksbaum and Raymond Learsy, New York

Charline von Heyl's paintings draw their energy from the interplay of positive and negative space, the fanning out of abstraction, and the endless layers from which the contrasting base and object are built up. The painterly process is not hidden for the benefit of a definitive end product; rather, it is present in every work and refers to the multiple, often contradictory, steps toward the discovery and emergence of an image. Emanating from the paintings is a secret which can never be completely revealed. They suggest the possibility of decoding a content which is then impossible to decipher in a linear fashion. Ornamental elements rub shoulders with surfaces that have superimposed and underlying structures. These various elements create a complex system of cross-references and associative transformations.
Charline von Heyl lives and works in New York.
The exhibition is supported by: IFA. Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e.V.


SILVIA KOLBOWSKI
Sep. 17 – Nov. 11, 2004


Silvia Kolbowski, an inadequate history of conceptual art, 1998-1999

Silvia Kolbowski is considered one of the major representatives of site-related spatial installations shaped by the conceptual art of the 1960s and 1970s. Her works are based on intense interactions amongst architecture, feminism and art institutions, and the complexity of cultural and social phenomena. In her most recent works the artist positions herself as a silent conversation partner. The (video/sound/photo-)installations integrate interview situations in which Kolbowski works with visual and formal gaps, and directorial omissions, so that the spectator questions the spoken, first-person narratives. In an inadequate history of conceptual art (1998-1999), for example, the artist devises rules for speakers, and separates image and sound, thereby pointing to the specific meanings of gesture, language, and history in conceptual art.
Silvia Kolbowski lives and works in New York.
The exhibition is supported by: Bang & Olufsen Flich (1010 Wien), Hanno Dicht- und Dämmsysteme


REGINA MÖLLER
Sep. 17 – Nov. 14, 2004


Regina Möller, regina in Schweden, Nr. 5, 2000

In the peripheral realm between art and everyday life, Regina Möller's works take up various forms of contemporary cultural communication and reflect their identity-forming, economic and functional connotations. Thus, in her magazine regina - of which 6 editions have been produced to date - she uses the language of a woman's magazine format, but at the same time, through the presentation of an intellectual background, evades the common gender-specific production of identity, its projection surfaces and symbolics. Characteristic of Möller's artistic praxis is that she enrols herself in various networks in a project oriented way and activates new teams, whereby her sphere of activity unites the most diverse roles and jobs such as art director, designer and author.
Regina Möller lives and works in Berlin.
The exhibition is supported by: IFA. Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e.V., plan 2. neubert & fuchs oeg


ALBERT OEHLEN
Nov. 26, 2004 – Jan. 30, 2005


Albert Oehlen

Albert Oehlen numbers among those artists who have been redefining painting internationally since the late 1970s. In this process, it is not only the deconstruction of the classical pictorial concept and the genre of painting that is prominent; instead, painting serves the greater intention of commenting on and undermining bourgeois values and ideologies within the art world. Both figurative and painterly elements characterize Oehlen's current works, in which multiple citations from his own earlier picture motifs as well as from the canon of art history can be found. A central element is the process of layering, whether within the events taking place in the picture or in the production of the surfaces; in this way, compositions created on the computer from photographic material are worked out as paintings.
Albert Oehlen lives and works in Cologne and in La Palma.
The exhibition is supported by: IFA. Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e.V.


JOSEPHINE PRYDE
Nov. 26, 2004 – Jan. 30, 2005


Josephine Pryde , Secretion I of IX, 2003

In the course of recent years, Josephine Pryde has attracted a great deal of attention, particularly for her photographic works. The artist uses photography - just as she does other media such as drawing, sculpture, performance, or occasional pieces of "installation art" - as a conceptual tool with which to discuss the temporality of aesthetic solutions and principles in connection with their transformation into commodities and myths. The employment of special tinting processes, structural glass filters and series of long exposures stir memories of intricate historical experiments and a tendency for abstraction. On the other hand, the photographs, like the other installations, are in close dialogue with their specific surroundings - e.g. the respective exhibition spaces and their architectures - or refer to a site-specific contextualization.
Josephine Pryde lives and works in London.
The exhibition is supported by: The British Council


NICOLE WERMERS
Nov. 26, 2004 – Jan. 30, 2005


Nicole Wermers, French Junkies #2, 2002

Nicole Wermers' collages and sculptures combine various materials - such as reflective foil, clippings from fashion magazines and wood and metal constructions - into graphic and architectural forms. This interaction of visual attractions creates a simultaneity of space and surface in which the dissolution of real, spatial references is just as present as the generation of space and physicality through abstract, dynamic object relations. "The effect of a hallucinatory objectivity thus emerges. The modern age begins to flicker." (Jan Verwoert). The works, which in part bring back memories of model construction processes, are located at the interface of architecture and design.
Nicole Wermers lives and works in Hamburg.
The exhibition is supported by: IFA. Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e.V.


BETTINA HENKEL
Internetprojekt, ab November 2004


Bettina Henkel, Spoon Dance In The Hippocampus, 2004



PERMANENT EXHIBITION
Gustav Klimt: THE BEETHOVEN FRIEZE
 
 
 
The exhibitions are realized through support of:

Erste Bank - Partner of the Secession
Bundesministerium für Unterricht, Kunst und Kultur
Wien Kultur
Friends of the Secession



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