SUMMER 2007

With projects by Azra Aksamija, Patrick Baumüller/Severin Hofmann, Jens Haaning, Antje Schiffers, and Tatzu Nishi the Secession will present a summer program that very directly addresses different public spheres—including communities that usually have little to do with (contemporary) art. The summer platform deals with the symbolically loaded architecture of the historical building opening up the Secession towards the urban space.

When the Danish artist Jens Haaning temporarily transfers an existing production company to the Secession, and brings the reality of small-scale industrial production lines and their workers, often immigrants, to the exhibition space, issues that significantly determine our present everyday life are addressed. This also goes for the project by Azra Aksamija, an artist and architecture theorist born in Bosnia, when, with a design for a prayer rug landscape, she interprets the architectural manifestation of the mosque as outdoor installation in an open-minded way, thus questioning the relation between religion and territoriality. Patrick Baumüller and Severin Hofmann’s project Die Wursthaberer allows for a direct experience of strategies and forms of action that artists are currently developing both within and beyond institutional frameworks; with their temporary Austrian hotdog stand they want to encourage a discussion of artists’ survival strategies and of conscious consumerism. Based on in-depth field studies, Antje Schiffers allows an insight into the life and work of farmers in Lower Austria, not without also offering a romantic image of country life in her theatrical mise-en-scène; introducing barter as an economic principle raises the question of how different activities are rated in society. Tatzu Nishi deals with the Secession as a historical monument by means of encasing the iconic dome, making it the center of an exclusive hotel room that only presents itself to those inside, while all that can be seen from the outside is a construction site with scaffolding.

With its summer program, the Secession establishes a discursive artistic modular system. The parallelism of different cultural practices is put to the test in a subtly matched interplay of offers and uses. Different realities are confronted with each other—realities that usually remain concealed, or of which stereotype images are inscribed within us. As a result, a new space for communication emerges that allows the protagonists of these colliding worlds, and the Secession’s visitors who are also part of them, enter into a dialogue: the protected (and protecting) artificial framework of the art institution becomes less hermetic, representation steps back in favor of production. The process-oriented nature of the projects is contrasted with the approved status quo of the institution in the tradition of the white cube; this opens up the possibility not only of picking up and pursuing discussions, but indeed of provoking new discourses—also in an established art-institutional context.


EVENTS

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Annual Report 2007
(only in German)




SHANDYISMUS. AUTORSCHAFT ALS GENRE
February 22 – April 15, 2007


Shandyismus. Autorschaft als Genre, Secession 2007, Foto Christian Wachter

The exhibition Shandyismus. Autorschaft als Genre refers to Laurence Sterne’s novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman from the 18th century. It will focus on Shandyism as a phenomenon or position, reflecting the diversity of points of contact with the media. A number of existing art works will be shown that express the methodological idiom of Shandyism. At the same time, artists have been invited to develop a “Shandyesque intervention” for the exhibition.
Curated by Helmut Draxler


ANDREA BOWERS
February 22 – April 15, 2007


Andrea Bowers, production still for upcoming project on the storage of The AIDS Memorial Quilt, 2006

The American artist Andrea Bowers does not see art and politics as two fixed realities but as two realms that influence each other. Her broad interest in various forms of non-violent protest, civil disobedience and feminism is motivated by a historical awareness and archival curiosity regarding the history of political activism and its visual language or bodily expression. This interest is also decisive for her action within the art system and the very precise articulation of her art in both aesthetic and thematic terms. Bowers’ project for the Secession continues her investigation of the intersection between activism and art. The exhibition examines the people who maintain and display The AIDS Memorial Quilt and the storage facility they oversee that houses this cultural artifact.
Andrea Bowers, born in 1965, lives and works in Los Angeles.


LEOPOLD KESSLER
February 22 – April 15, 2007


Leopold Kessler, Depot, 2005, Video, Courtesy Galerie Andreas Huber

Leopold Kessler’s works focus on public space, exploring the topography of cities – from the traffic signs that structure urban life to the modes of behavior influenced by it. The artist’s interventions aim at squares, paths, street signs or street barriers, which serve as material for his sculptures. Moreover he has repeatedly pointed out the gaps that can be found in the systematic organization of social space.
Leopold Kessler, born in 1976, lives and works in Vienna.


TOM BURR
April 28 – June 24, 2007


Tom Burr, Split, 2005, Courtesy Galerie Neu

The sculptures, installations, rooms, and photographic works of the American artist Tom Burr are often seen in the context of Minimalist sculpture. But this is only one reference within these many-layered works, which articulate desire at the same time as displaying a rigorously conceptual aesthetic. They are erotically charged objects whose surfaces transport (sub)cultural references to Tony Smith as well as to Jim Morrison and Kenneth Anger. Tom Burr’s elegant arrangements can act as stages for performative events by real persons, or for gestures and items of clothing, pieces of furniture and materials that recall a person. They are frozen moments, like memories of situations in bars, garden hedges, or urinals that have turned into sculpture, memories of semi-public spaces with ingrained rules and hierarchies that evoke both intimacy and exposure at the same time. Burr’s sculpture Deep Purple (2000), for example—a scaled down, purple-painted wooden model of Richard Serra’s famous Tilted Arc (1984), a direct formal appropriation—deals with political/aesthetic issues and individual ways of life as mutually determining spheres. Serra’s sculpture sparked a violent dispute on what is modern art and who does the public domain belong to, because the sheltered space inside Tilted Arc was allegedly used for “forbidden” acts such as urinating, cruising, and drug dealing. For his exhibition in the Secession’s Hauptraum, Tom Burr will develop new works around the theme of the self-portrait in the broadest sense.
Tom Burr (born 1963) lives and works in New York.


DEIMANTAS NARKEVIČIUS
April 28 – June 24, 2007


Deimantas Narkevicius, Revisiting Solaris, 2007, Courtesy Jan Mot

The films of the Lithuanian artist Deimantas Narkevicius deal with the experience of collective—mostly Eastern European—history. In the politically and culturally turbulent situation in Eastern European states since the 1990s, Narkevicius currently sees a vacuum in which ideological self-awareness is characterized neither by a reflection of one’s own history, nor by any kind of vision for the future. In Narkevicius’ films, history (past and future) constructs itself out of active relations with individual biographies. The protagonists of his films remember and reconstruct, weaving their personal history with a linear concept of history generally accepted as true. Using a consistent, documentary approach, Narkevicius explores the medium of film: interviews heard as voices-off are commented on by photographs or drawings, for example, and diverse film techniques and narrative styles are used simultaneously.
Besides Once in the XX Century (2005), Disappearance of a Tribe (2004) and The Role of a Lifetime (2003), Narkevicius will be showing his new film Revisiting Solaris, in which Donatas Banionis, the lead actor from Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972), appears once more, over forty years later, as the astronaut Chris Kelvin. Tarkovsky, who based the film on Stanislav Lem’s futuristic novel of the same name, left the last chapter out of his movie. This chapter tells how the astronaut sets foot on the surface of the planet Solaris shortly before ending his space mission. Narkevicius combines the story of the astronaut with a series of photographs made in 1905 by Mykalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis, a Lithuanian symbolist painter and composer.
Deimantas Narkevicius (born 1964 in Utena, Lithuania) lives in Vilnius.


ANTJE SCHIFFERS
July 6 – September 9, 2007


Antje Schiffers, Hof, 2006

Itinerant painter, maker of flower graphics, factory artist—Antje Schiffers looks for roles which assign her tasks in a wide range of contexts, locally and in distant lands. Schiffers is interested in becoming acquainted with other realities and cooperating with different segments of the population, organizing each contact as a barter in which she trades the products of her artistic work for public commitment, texts, videos, or hospitality. For the Secession, Antje Schiffers is developing a new project in which she focuses on the world of farmers in Lower Austria, offering them paintings of their farms in return for videos of their work, families, markets, views on agricultural policy, etc.. She also draws attention to formal and dramaturgical aspects with regard to the images and commentary chosen by the farmers in their films. Schiffers paints her pictures in situ, providing an opportunity for conversation and assistance. The use of barter evokes a romantic image associated with both the farmer and the artist. Her tour of villages as a “court painter” is an enchanted notion. But it also allows Schiffers to experience areas and styles of life she would not otherwise have access to. As a painter exploring various milieus, she examines the expectations of those she meets concerning painting and concerning the artist.
Antje Schiffers (born in 1967 in Heiligendorf) lives and works in Berlin.


JENS HAANING
July 6 – September 9, 2007


Jens Haaning, Baghdad Sign, 2006, The shop sign from “Furniture Cotton Garden” in Ramadan Street, Almansour, Baghdad, Iraq. Courtesy: Galerie Barbara Thumm, Berlin

The Danish artist Jens Haaning deals primarily with the question of how a society constitutes itself and how power is expressed and communicated within it. Haaning sounds out the political in art at the interface between institutional context and social reality, and between the cultural mission of an institution and the individual value of an artwork.
Haaning focuses in particular on immigrant integration processes, highlighting the cultural complexity on both sides. For Office for Exchange of Citizenship (Secession, 1997; Galerie für zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig, 1998), Jens Haaning used a legal gray zone to take institutional positions of power to absurd lengths. Individuals interested in changing their nationality could obtain advice from lawyers in a specially created office. Foreigners free (1997) is situated in a similar context: at public institutions as theaters, swimming pools, and museums whose ticket desks had signs saying “Ausländer frei,” foreigners were allowed in free of charge. Haaning did not make explicit to visitors whether this ambiguous phrase was meant in the xenophobic sense of “no foreigners” or as a generous gesture of hospitality—thus demonstrating how fragile the basis for internationalism and global thinking is in our society today. In his work, Haaning is not interested in the grand gestures of someone who thinks they can set the world to rights. He always operates with exemplary, everyday situations that are familiar to public and individual consciousness. For only where there is knowledge and awareness can there be change.
Jens Haaning (born 1965) lives and works in Copenhagen.


BAUMÜLLER / HOFMANN
June– September, 2007, Outdoors


www.wursthaberer.com

Patrick Baumüller and Severin Hofmann are interested in everyday practices and views, for which they design models that invert and parody orders and that merge spaces into one another. For their projects they use publicly accessible locations to enable and present this kind of overlapping. The artists have established a parallel existence in the sausage manufacturing industry as “Die Wursthaberer.” Their project for the open space at the Secession is planned as a work in progress, helping increase the venue’s profile as a meeting place from summer 2007. A construction trailer adapted by Andreas Strauss housing the Austrian hotdog stand will be run by [ dy'na:mo ] , the managers of the Viennese club fluc, and promises to become a vital space for communication connecting the art world, the urban public, and tourists. Visitors can enjoy excellent food while relaxing and making contacts, talking, discussing, and philosophizing; new ideas arise and concepts are developed—an appeal to both the intellectual and the sensual. The project is partly an experiment, insofar as “Die Wursthaberer” see themselves as initiators in the design of an alternative space for multi-fictional lived experience. In this light, the environment around the sausage stand can also be seen as a “open studio.” The fact that its side products include art will be documented in still and moving pictures.
Archive/details at: www.wursthaberer.com


AZRA AKSAMIJA
July – Oct, 2007, Open space


Azra Aksamija, Kunstmoschee, Secession 2007

Azra Aksamija’s work is concerned with the architectural manifestations of religion and Islamic culture, as well as the traces they have left behind in Europe. A dialogue between Muslim and non-Muslim is promoted by means of the reinterpretation of elements from historic Islamic culture and its “mergence” with Western European architectural or cultural patterns. Azra Aksamija’s expansive, interactive installation in the garden of the Secession—Art Mosque—investigates contemporary Islamic practices within an artistic context. The Art Mosque comprises several modular prayer mats which, when laid end to end, create an ornamental carpet landscape. Whereas Muslims can actually use the prayer mat modules for their daily prayer ritual, non-Muslims can use carpets alternatively to sit or recline for relaxation purposes. In this way the Art Mosque becomes a space in which different users with differing cultural needs may congregate and communicate with one another. The Art Mosque will be accompanied by events such as design workshops, talks or film screenings, which will examine the relationship between the latter-day architecture of mosques and the politics of identity. In this way attention can be drawn to the enduring Islamic cultural tradition in Europe and a countenance be given to the many and diverse Islamic identities in Austria. Azra Aksamija hopes to counter Islamophobia with her installation and concomitantly to shift the focus from the distorted and politicized representation of Islam in Europe to the universal beauty of Islamic culture and aesthetics.
Azra Aksamija (born 1976) lives and works in Cambridge, USA.
http://www.mit.edu/~azra/


TATZU NISHI
August – October, 2007


Tatzu Nishi, Hotel Continental, 2000

The Japanese artist Tatzu Nishi works with architecture, objects, and monuments found in public spaces. This may involve the decorative figures on a Baroque gable, the lamp from a street light, or concrete balls designed to separate pedestrian and driving zones—all things one does not usually come close to or which receive little attention in everyday life. Around these otherwise unreachable objects, Tatzu Nishi builds spaces that look from outside like construction sites, but which are revealed inside as fully furnished. Rooms one can use to read, to relax, or to satisfy one’s curiosity. In the new context, the focal object—e.g., the street lamp—becomes a decorative item of furniture, redefining previously public space as private or semi-private. Sometimes it will be a living room, other times more a lobby or a waiting room, a hotel room available for hire, or a fully functioning restaurant. By a simple intervention, the familiar is altered and the routine becomes unfamiliar. The artist examines the relationship between inside and outside, private and public, sculpture and space, exhibition and instruction. For the Secession, Tatzu Nishi will focus on the building as a monument and on its decorative dome that shimmers golden on the outside and looks like a green canopy of leaves from the inside. The dome is not usually accessible to the public, making it seem all the more attractive and mysterious.
Tatzu Nishi (born 1960) lives and works in Cologne.


TUE GREENFORT
September 20 – November 18, 2007


Tue Greenfort, Taillefine , 2007, Courtesy: Johann König

The Danish artist Tue Greenfort analyzes everyday phenomena in a humorous way, while remaining rigorously conceptual in formal terms. His exhibition projects often pose questions about ecological and economic issues as water, resources, and capital. He is interested in the recycling both of materials and of stories and ideas. After an exhibition opening, for example, he took the leftover empty bottles, cutting and smoothing them so that they could be used as glasses. These glasses were then mixed in with the “normal” glasses at the next opening. As well as being aesthetically pleasing exhibits and useful objects, they also refer to associative and communicative processes in artistic production in general. In most cases, Tue Greenfort uses small interventions to point out often overlooked aspects of public space. He observes details of urban life that are less well known or rendered inconspicuous by being taken for granted. In one case, he turned trash bags taken from the four-coloured recycling system of Deutsche Bahn into a fragile installation. Polyethylene, the material from which the bags are made, is a major contributor to the economic and technical progress in Western society, but it also poses one of its greatest environmental problems. Tue Greenfort focuses on situations in space and in everyday life, using small alterations or mechanisms to give insights into the hidden side of urbanity.
Tue Greenfort (born 1973) lives and works in Berlin.


PIOTR UKLAŃSKI
September 20 – November 18, 2007


Piotr Uklanski, Untitled (President du groupe Artemis, Monsieur Francois Pinault), 2003

In his photographic works, collages, sculptures, and installations, Polish artist Piotr Uklanski uses stereotypical motifs and strategies from pop culture, art, and cinema to address issues of cultural identity and authenticity. Ukla n ski has a reputation for a certain insolence with regard to the way he plays with audience expectations, the way he not only uses strategies of self-promotion and marketing but also draws on them for fundamental aspects of his conceptual work, and the way he co-opts references. He starts with pictures that are already bankrupt, hackneyed, and hollow and proceeds to totally destroy them. He recycles visuals, concepts, and clichés-landscapes, sunsets, Hollywood, great artists, collectors, curators-and gives them a new presence, both crass and seductive, presicely by questioning the politics of different visual worlds.
Piotr Uklanski lives and works in New York and Warsaw.


KORPYS / LÖFFLER
November 29, 2007 – February 3, 2008


Korpys/Löffler, The Nuclear Football, 2004, Filmstill, DV, 30:00 Min

For over a decade, André Korpys and Markus Löffler have been working on joint projects, installations, and video works that critically examine the conditions and forms of representation in today’s information society and politics. Today, reality is increasingly constructed by media images, meaning that identity, too, is linked with the media. But how is it possible to distinguish between fact and fiction when reality is communicated and perceived via mass media channels and digitally manipulated images? In their works, Korpus/Löffler question the truth of this staged reality, as well as examining the social definition of power and the sometimes subtle functioning of hierarchies, control, exclusion, and influence. For one piece, they spent a whole day filming an influential industrialist and art lover, the president of the Federation of German Industry Hans-Olaf Henkel, and combined these recordings with footage of some ruined barracks in the former East Germany. Other works, too, deal with media representations of key figures of power, e.g., the death and enthronement of the old and new popes, or George W. Bush. The artists see themselves as archaeologists of the present, studying the structures and essence of society and recording changes.
Korpys/Löffler (born 1966/1963) live and work in Bremen and Berlin.



DISPLAY CASE
Westpassage exit Secession, 1010 Vienna, Friedrichstrasse 12

FOOTNOTES
A series of projects curated by Hajnalka Somogyi
Nov. 2007 – Nov. 2008

Zbynek Baladrán – Opening November 28, 2007
Miklós Erhardt – March 2008
Saso Sedlacek – July 2008


Zbynek Baladrán, GLOSSARY (Detail), 2007



PERMANENT EXHIBITION
Gustav Klimt: THE BEETHOVEN FRIEZE



OPENING HOURS
Tuesday to Sunday 10.00 a.m. – 6.00 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:
 
Tamara Schwarzmayr
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