EXHIBITION PROGRAM   2010   2009   2008   2007   2006   2005   2004   2003   2002   2001   2000   1999   1998   1997   1996     INDEX 1996-2009

CURRENT EXHIBITIONS

OSWALD OBERHUBER Jan 26 – Feb 19, 2006	CLEGG & GUTTMANN Mar 3 – Apr 24, 2006	MAJA VUKOJE Mar 3 – Apr 24, 2006	LONE HAUGAARD MADSEN Mar 3 – Apr 4, 2006
STEFAN SANDNER May 5 – June 25, 2006	DAVE HULLFISH BAILEY May 5 – June 25, 2006	KRISTINA LEKO May 5 – June 25, 2006	ISA GENZKEN July 6 – Sep 10, 2006
DAVID LAMELAS July 6 – Sep 10, 2006	JULIE AULT / MARTIN BECK Sep 22 – Nov 12, 2006	I (ICH) / PERFORMATIVE ONTOLOGY kuratiert von Vit Havránek Sep 22 – Nov 12, 2006	STAN DOUGLAS Nov 24, 2006 – Jan 28, 2007
JUDITH HOPF Nov 24, 2006 – Jan 28, 2007	MIDORI MITAMURA Nov 24, 2006 – Jan 28, 2007

OSWALD OBERHUBER
26. 1. – 19. 2. 2006



On the occasion of his 75th birthday, the Secession is inviting its honorary member Oswald Oberhuber for an exhibition. Not least on account of the broad scope of his activities, Oswald Oberhuber is one of the outstanding figures in Austrian art over the last 50 years. Besides his work as an artist, he has made important contributions to the development and communication of art as a teacher, as rector of the Academy of Applied Arts in Vienna, and as director of Galerie nächst St. Stephan. The exhibition in the Hauptraum and the Grafisches Kabinett, co-curated by Oswald Oberhuber and Dr. Robert Fleck, Director of Hamburg’s Deichtorhallen, traces Oberhuber’s artistic development beginning with the informal sculptures of the 1950s and ‘60s, showing influential but often little knows bodies of work, some for the first time in many years. An extensive compilation of drawings and a selection of his posters point to the diversity of an oeuvre that does justice to Oberhuber’s own repeated appeals for permanent change.
Oswald Oberhuber (*1931) lives and works in Vienna.


CLEGG & GUTTMANN
March 3 – April 23, 2006



In the work of Michael Clegg und Martin Guttmann, the functions and utilizations of historical, public, and institutional spaces intersect. Whether they are recreating structures from the first international Zionist congress, developing a Monument for Historical Change for Berlin, or creating libraries with uncontrolled access, they always actively involve the viewer in appropriating these works as historical and public places. Because this appropriation is understood primarily as an intellectual process, the individual projects are accompanied by theoretical reflections and texts, augmenting the exhibition in the form of discussions and communicating in the longer term in the form of publications. For the Secession, Clegg & Guttmann plan to revisit the debate between Ernst Mach and Ludwig Boltzmann over the form of atoms that was conducted in Vienna during the 1890s. Although the dispute may initially appear as a purely academic affair, the type of artistic approach taken by Clegg & Guttmann can offer deeper insights into political, social, and aesthetic conditions in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy at the fin de siècle.
Michael Clegg (*1957) and Martin Guttmann (*1957) live and work in New York and Vienna.


MAJA VUKOJE
March 3 – April 23, 2006



Inner conflicts, contradictions, and the questioning of a coherent personality are central themes in the works of Maja Vukoje. In her large-format paintings, the artist creates spheres of the uncanny, of the ambiguous, of physical presence in a process of dissolution. Ghostly outlines, permeable half-beings who threaten to vanish into a mistily blurred background at any moment, proclaim the fragility of the clearly visible. In her approach to painting, the fragmentation of content is emphasized not by precise execution but by loose allusions. The simultaneous use of different techniques—spray paints with acrylics and oil, dripping and smears as well as powerful brushstrokes, earthy watercolor tones next to bile green and luminous orange—generate the necessary tension between the concrete and the transparent.
Maja Vukoje (*1969) lives and works in Vienna.


LONE HAUGAARD MADSEN
March 3 – April 23, 2006



The theoretical and material parameters of the exhibition trade stand at the centre of Lone Haugaard Madsen’s works. In them, she deals with issues of cultural production in the contexts of the museum, the gallery, the media, the academy and business, as well as making concrete interventions in the construction of exhibition spaces. In their sculptural quality, the temporary architectures, wall systems, and seats that she designs for situation-specific arrangements using simple materials like wooden slats and chipboard not only oscillate between art object and functional furniture, but also make visible the real and the utopian conditions of exhibition situations. The white wall as a constitutive element of art spaces is also illuminated by Haugaard Madsen in her body of work comprising film and photographic images of exhibition walls. In the form of shifts, duplications, and simulations, she folds actual, mediated and generated space into each other, pointing far beyond a cartography of traces and a marking of place. Recently, besides the theme of the exhibition space, Lone Haugaard Madsen’s works have focused increasingly on the studio.
Lone Haugaard Madsen (*1974) lives and works in Vienna.


STEFAN SANDNER
May 5 – June 25, 2006



With the exhibition by Stefan Sandner, the Secession continues its recent tradition of presenting the oeuvre or a specific aspect of the recent work of Austrian artists of the younger generation in a large show. Stefan Sandner’s examination of the history of Minimalist painting, mainly from America (e.g., Kelly, Noland, Stella, and Mangold), has given rise to austere, often sparsely executed pictures. His use of the shaped canvases of Noland or Stella, however, is not merely an art-historical quotation. Instead, Sandner also uses this historical “technique” as a reference to the formal language of our everyday media world. Sandner’s interest focuses on the way images—regardless of their origin—are constructed and how they are related. In this sense, Sandner’s new works, in which fragments of hand-written notes (e.g., from Kurt Cobain’s diaries, anonymous scribblings on beer coasters, or private notes from friends) are applied to the canvas in isolation and out of context, can also be read as a meditation on the creation of meaning and (art) history.
Stefan Sandner (*1968) lives and works in Vienna.


DAVE HULLFISH BAILEY
May 5 – June 25, 2006



In his installations, the American artist Dave Hullfish Bailey explores the conditions of human coexistence in urban spaces. He is particularly interested in the question of the ideals and utopias that are behind town planning measures and in the shaping but most often barely perceptible structures that result from them for the individual and the community. On the one hand, Bailey’s works question the location-specific handling of key concepts like economic development, sustainability, architecture, and social and communal values. On the other hand, they also deal with the tension that is created when, in the wake of disasters such as terrorist attacks, earthquakes, and floods, the structures regulating coexistence cease to function for a time and society temporarily creates a new sense of togetherness independent of ethnicity, religion, social origins, and political persuasion. Along with drawings and sculptures, Dave Bailey will present a video piece documenting the industrial mechanisms for professional storage of grain in giant silos; in this works he probes the extent to which this interface between agricultural produce and modern mechanical processing can function as a metaphor for possible structures within society.
Dave Hullfish Bailey (*1963) lives and works in Los Angeles.


KRISTINA LEKO
May 5 – June 25, 2006



Kristina Leko once referred to her works as “expanded documentary cinema.” Characteristic of her often participatory projects is the overlapping of aesthetic and documentary concerns, of autobiographical narrative and methods of presentation and (object) description reminiscent of ethnography. Another important quality of her approach is the principle of heterogeneity expressed both in her chosen media (video, photography, text, performative projects) and in the visual appearance of her works, as well as in the number and range of discourses she makes room for. Leko understands art as social commitment, as a tool for rendering marginalized groups and their situation visible. She deliberately juxtaposes different modes of expression and statements, different ways of telling (life) histories and interpreting reality, in order to refute the illusion of a definitive, overriding history as such. “There is no single history, only a multitude of stories, languages, types of narrative, and discourses which at certain points come into contact, link up, or just stand unrelated alongside one another.” (Barbara Steiner)
Kristina Leko (*1966) lives and works in Zagreb and Cologne.


ISA GENZKEN
July 6 – September 10, 2006



Isa Genzken’s work explores the space between official claims and private, artistic autonomy. Her sculptures—often located in public, architectural spaces—define an interface or a kind of edge where the personal and the universal meet. This finds its equivalent in Genzken’s method: with almost unruly freedom, formally and conceptually rigorous starting positions are broken down, resulting in works that can be read and experienced on very different levels. Within her work, there exist divergent approaches that could be perceived at first glance as breaks, but which reveal themselves on closer inspection as a continual focus on fundamental artistic issues. A central role is played by the selection and combination of different and in some cases differently connoted materials. Having worked for a long time with concrete, the material of Modernism, Genzken now often combines perforated metal sheeting, epoxy resin, and found materials and artifacts. The borders between soft and hard are not fixed, often colliding and overlapping. In her photographic works, too, Isa Genzken surveys the space between the personal and the public, be it social, institutional or in the media. Here too, she focuses on contrasting an external and an internal view, and on the place where the two can meet. To coincide with the exhibition at the Secession, for which Isa Genzken is making a new large-scale installation, Galerie im Taxispalais in Innsbruck will show a comprehensive overview of her oeuvre, including early work. The two exhibition projects will be linked by a joint publication.
Isa Genzken (*1948) lives and works in Berlin.


DAVID LAMELAS
July 7 – September 10, 2006



“It is impossible for me to make definitive statements. A piece is defined by the person who looks at it.”*
In his artistic practice, which covers a wide range of media from spatial interventions to films, David Lamelas explores the concept of the artwork and the roles of author and viewer within it. His sculpture- and installation-based works of the 1960s established the fact that the space surrounding the work (that is defined not locally or nationally, but as immaterial) is a constitutive element. Space has no meaning geographically, but solely in terms of an intellectual and transnational position. Rather that contenting himself with a vision of the artist as a political subject or overemphasizing this role, David Lamela creates scope for a process of critical analysis that does without moralizing (of whatever kind). For the Galerie at the Secession, Lamelas will devise a site-specific intervention which temporarily redefines the determinants of the space; this approach is of particular interest since it has traditionally been the Hauptraum and not the other two spaces that is subjected to spatial analysis by artists. For the Grafisches Kabinett—the only exhibition space at the Secession with an outside view—Lamelas will develop a new sound piece.
*From an interview with Lynda Morris, 1972
David Lamelas (*1946) lives and works in Buenos Aires and Paris.


JULIE AULT / MARTIN BECK
September 22 – November 12, 2006



Julie Ault and Martin Beck, who make art both as a duo and as individuals, define their work as an extended form of cultural praxis. This takes a wide range of forms: besides works exhibited in institutional contexts (which they examine from inside, so to speak), they publish critical texts about artistic and general societal phenomena, and about their own work. In addition, they are also frequently responsible for the design of major exhibition projects (including X-Screen at MUMOK, Vienna, 2004). All these different approaches are founded on an interest in the archiving of knowledge and culture, in the ways cultural economies present themselves, how they change, and how they can be changed. How does the presentation of history and the past shape the image of the present? Which aspects of cultural practices are (deliberately) kept in the shadows of official historiography and why? To what extent are the design and content of exhibitions and publications interrelated and how can priorities be realized in accordance with the wishes of the authors? The care devoted by Julie Ault and Martin Beck to questions of design and design technique is reflected in their precise articulation of the fundamentals of artistic and intellectual production.
Julie Ault (*1957) and Martin Beck (*1963) live and work in New York.


I (ICH) / PERFORMATIVE ONTOLOGY
September 22 – November 12, 2006



After Bratislava (Narrow Focus, 2005) and Prague (June 2006), the group show curated by Vit Havránek for the Secession is the third in a themed series of exhibitions addressing questions of the political and historical determination of spheres and modes of experience. The title points to an attempt not to grasp ontology in the sense of classical categories—outstretching the individual, removed from real conditions of time and space—but to contrast this model with an (alternative) ontology that develops its formulations and categories out of the physical, emotional, and historically determined sphere of experience of the individual. The exhibition brings together international artistic positions that take a broad range of approaches to the (possible) plurality of ontological categorization, thus focusing on the potential for a “direct ontology”.
Vit Havránek (*1971) lives and works in Prague.


STAN DOUGLAS
November 24, 2006 – January 28, 2007



In his film and photo works, the Canadian artist Stan Douglas combines conceptual strategies from the 1970s with a contemporary and highly distinctive visual idiom. In a process of deciphering, he disconnects images from their original sequences and reassembles them, often in ways that go against their original readings. For the Secession, Douglas is working on a new film project centering on the story of a murder at the height of the gold rush in the West Canadian region of the Cariboo. The focus is less on the police search for the culprit than on the different ways the crime is seen by those involved. As well as unfolding the plot through the different points of view of the protagonists, Douglas also shows deviations in the content of their versions depending on how much time has elapsed since the events and on their individual intentions. In this way, the multi-perspective patchwork forms a dense narrative and acoustic weave, similar to the film within a film used by Akira Kurosawa in Rashomon to capture the fragmented nature of reality. In Douglas’ films, lyricism and intellectual challenge stand in constructive opposition. The formal exactness with which his works are composed is mirrored in a precision both conceptual and in terms of content that makes his oeuvre one of the most outstanding in contemporary art.
Stan Douglas (*1960) lives and works in Vancouver.


JUDITH HOPF
November 24, 2006 – January 28, 2007



Judith Hopf writes, makes installations, sculptures, performances and video works. She works both alone and in collectives. In The Uninvited (with Katrin Pesch), for example, she explores the impact on society of the constantly increasing militarization of news, and examines the increasing public presence of such news outside of conventional media like newspapers or television. In another video piece, Proprio Aperto (with Natascha Sadr Haghighian and Florian Zeyfang), the artists visit the garden site of the Biennale di Venezia when the event is not taking place and document the transformation of the national pavilions: homeless people temporarily adapt the pavilions to their own needs, creating the starkest possible contrast to the usual function of this representative exhibition architecture during the Biennale. Appropriation and counter-reality are central concepts running through Judith Hopf’s self-willed works, which resist all attempts at co-opting and classification for the market and which focus explicitly on this resistance.
Judith Hopf (*1969) lives and works in Berlin.


MIDORI MITAMURA
November 24, 2006 – January 28, 2007



“The emotions that the events of daily life give rise to cannot, by and large, be recorded but live only within our memories.” (Mitamura)
Midori Mitamura’s works situated between photography and installation quote elements from her own past or that of others, which she then uses to lay bare modes of memory and the remembering repetition of private biography. The installations and fictitious spaces created by Mitamura juxtapose staged photographs with found photo material, video works, music, and private memorabilia such as items of furniture and clothing that are associated with the artist’s past. In Two o’clock afternoon, at the hill on a windy winter day (2001), she meticulously rebuilds a bookcase from her parents’ apartment and fills it with objects of private remembrance; and in Inventions – Sunny Flat Days (2000) she presents amateur photographs from 1950s Japan to the rhythm of Bach’s Inventions. With subtlety, precision, and irony, Mitamura probes the fraught realm between private, personally charged memory and objective memory, between history as it is lived and as it is reconstructed in retrospect, pointing to the fleeting and elusive nature of personal experience.
Midori Mitamura (*1964) lives and works in Tokyo.



PERMANENT EXHIBITION
Gustav Klimt: THE BEETHOVEN FRIEZE
 
 
OPENING HOURS
Tuesday to Sunday 10 a.m. – 6 p.m.



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:
 
Urte Schmitt-Ulms
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