WERNER FEIERSINGER
February 29 – April 13, 2008
Hauptraum


Werner Feiersinger, Ohne Titel, 2007, Photo: Werner Feiersinger, Courtesy Galerie Martin Janda

In his photographic works, collages, sculptures, and Contradictions between the dogmatic theoretical demands of classical Modernism and later classical Modernist works in architecture that do not strictly fulfill these demands provide the material for Werner Feiersinger’s work. He is interested in the mystification of Modernism as an embodiment of functionality and rationality, a myth generated by the written statements of prominent figures of the period and by their almost equally dogmatic and hence “uncritical” reception. The sculptor and photographer is not prepared to let this go unnoticed. On the contrary, he is motivated precisely by these inconsistencies and contradictions, producing ambivalent objects and photographs of subject matter that is well enough known but from a surprisingly unconventional point of view capable of bringing different and unexpected aspects to light.

Werner Feiersinger, born in 1966 in Brixlegg, Tyrol, lives and works in Vienna.



PHILIPPE DECRAUZAT
February 29 – April 13, 2008
Galerie, Grafisches Kabinett


Philippe Decrauzat, Secession 2008, Photo: Christian Wachter

With his wall paintings, films, sculptures, paintings, and installations, Philippe Decrauzat’s art is firmly rooted in the legacy of 20th century abstract art, using the formal idiom of Russian Constructivism, the visual effects of Op Art, or the reduced geometries of Minimalism. In spite of this, his works are characterized by their claim to maintain a certain critical distance to all these styles. Consequently, Decrauzat’s position with regard to Modernism is not at all as it appears at first glance. His practice is also associated with the methods and theories of experimental film or pop culture, the cinematography of science fiction, etc. The power of his work lies above all in a “compression” of modern modes of seeing. Beyond the Modernist logic of the optical, Decrauzat focuses on the eye, an instrument long excluded from the discourse of the period.

Philippe Decrauzat, born in 1974 in Lausanne, lives and works in Lausanne.



FRANCES STARK
April 2 – June 22, 2008
Hauptraum


Frances Stark, ANOTHER CHORUS INDIVIDUAL (IN THE CUL-DE-SAC), poster, graphite and paper collage on paper, 192x146 cm

Frances Stark’s delicately wrought collages, paintings, drawings and texts combine to form a multi-layered work which is located between poetry, fine art and autobiographical allusion. Her representations of spaces, landscapes, plants or animals are often metaphors for the vulnerability of the human condition. In so doing Stark’s artistic practice is predicated upon an engagement with different aspects of everyday life whose paths cross again and again with literary, musical or philosophical traditions. The way Stark connects often diametrically opposed ideas and stories gives her methodology an intensely contemporary flair. However, she does have recourse to established practices, for example to systems of archiving redolent of Conceptual art. In her highly personal, partly autobiographical texts the artist primarily reflects upon her own writings by contextualising them with artistic concepts such as repetition, reproduction and accumulation. The question regarding what it means to be an artist and writer in today’s world forms as it were the backbone of Stark’s thinking and approach.

Frances Stark, born 1967, lives and works in Los Angeles.



DAVE ALLEN
April 2 – June 22, 2008
Galerie


Dave Allen, INVERTED OH-TON, 2004, Performance, Falun, Foto: Josefin Herold

Since the early 1990s Dave Allen’s works have concentrated upon researching materials, mythologies and social situations of Rock’n’Roll. His artistic practice encompasses elements of music, video, performance and fine art, following a self-taught approach to experimental music from the previous century at the point where these elements intersect. Thus Allen concerns himself with audio equipment and the way in which the transition from analogue to digital technology has transformed the relationship of consumption and production. He documents empty concert halls or recording studios with installations into which he integrates noiseless CDs and intensifies thus the perception of sounds—normally actively suppressed by sound engineers—to which no one pays any particular attention. Dave Allen is developing a new work for the Secession, which, amongst other things, is concerned with the formation of the Artists’ Association.

Dave Allen, born 1963, lives and works in Stockholm.



JO BAER
April 2 – June 22, 2008
Grafisches Kabinett


Jo Baer, WHITE STAR, 1960-61, Courtesy Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterloo

Jo Baer is regarded as the pioneer of Minimalism. Since the late 1950s her work has been based on a highly reduced, angular style which she has realised predominantly in a series of squares as well as vertical and horizontal rectangles with heavily delineated borders. Jo Baer’s later works testify to her increasing resistance to the notion of Minimalism as the harbinger of “The Death of Painting”. Since 1975 she has turned away from abstraction in favour of a more representational and metaphorical style, which she has continued to develop in a number of different guises since then. Jo Baer will present two diptychs in the Secession which she considers to be representative in the overall context of her work—one from her “minimalist” period and the other from her “representational” period.

Jo Baer, born 1929, lives and works in Amsterdam.



THOMAS HIRSCHHORN
July 5 – September 4, 2008
Hauptraum


Thomas Hirschhorn, STAND-ALONE, 2007, Arndt & Partner Galerie, Berlin 2007, Foto: Bernd Borchardt

The Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn, who has appeared many times in international exhibitions since the 1990s, is renowned for unequivocal political statements in his art. His elaborate, spatially expansive installations are usually devised using radically “poor”, highly symbolic materials such as cardboard, sellotape, household foils, photocopies and newspaper cuttings. The use of these materials is a conscious political decision against a separation into the categories of “high” and “low”. Hirschhorn’s understanding of art as socio-political engagement is not geared towards aesthetic enjoyment but is conceived rather as a starting point for engagement. Hirschhorn’s vocabulary is directed against the élite and in so doing highlights the periphery, the precarious, the fringes: “I am adamantly opposed to the idea of creating political art. I create art in a political way.”

Thomas Hirschhorn, born 1957, lives and works in Paris.



ISA ROSENBERGER
July 5 – September 4, 2008
Galerie


Novy Most- Bridge in Bratislava, 2007, Photo: Isa Rosenberger

Isa Rosenberger’s work engages with a variety of socio-political themes, in particular the urban world, gender and the public arena. She focuses upon mental and medial images that have a specific function of creating identity, as well as the question regarding the possibilities for changing these (symbolic) value systems. Rosenberger initiates a process of exchange for her projects and tries to transmit therein the viewpoints and experience of others. She works with a variety of media, but chiefly with video for which she has devised both indoor and outdoor installative displays. Isa Rosenberger’s new video piece is entitled NOVY MOST after the bridge of the same name built in 1967 in Bratislava, representing the view from the East to the West. Documentary and staged scenes as well as archive material about the building of NOVY MOST are fused into a filmic collage about the dynamic tensions in the relationship between East and West from the (subjective) perspectives of three women from different generations. Alongside the video work NOVY MOST Isa Rosenberger will be presenting the projects EIN DENKMAL FÜR DAS FRAUENZENTRUM (THE MAKING OF) [A MONUMENT FOR THE WOMEN’S CENTRE], 2005/06, and DIE WARSCHAUER NIKE [THE WARSAW NIKE]. All three works examine the process of transformation in Eastern Europe the artist is endeavouring to chronicle in a changed perception of monuments and architecture.

Isa Rosenberger, born 1969, lives and works in Vienna.



MIKLÓS ERHARDT
July 5 – September 4, 2008
Grafisches Kabinett


Miklós Erhardt, TEMPORARY SETTINGS, Secession 2008, Photo: Wolfgang Thaler

In his often documentary and collaborative artistic works, publications and network activities, the Hungarian artist Miklós Erhardt engages chiefly with reflections on political, economic topics in contemporary art. Since talking and thinking about the economy has increasingly become the preserve of experts, this discussion has commensurately lost its connection to everyday life. Accordingly the economy is regarded more and more as an independent degree of complexity that the public can no longer control, still less comprehend. Miklós Erhardt engages with this predicament in part in interviews, which he conducts with workers, business people, social workers and immigrants inviting them to evaluate their personal work situation. The results represent extremely individual attitudes and appraisals of the world of commerce and the concept of labour.

Miklós Erhardt, born 1966, lives and works in Budapest.



KLAUS WEBER
September 19 – November 9, 2008
Hauptraum


Klaus Weber, UNFOLDING CUL DE SAC, 2002, installation, 7 x 7 m tarmac-mushroom field

The concepts for the multimedia installations by Klaus Weber aim to extend the consciousness, and to invest dynamism in their setting as flying machines, catalysts and filters. In his scenarios, sculptures and videos he designs images of an untameable — even in its cultivated form — contrary nature. In doing so he subversively reinterprets the generally negative connotations of a sense of power loss in the informed Western world with its marked inclination towards subservience, and introduces other cultural value systems. In the Secession Klaus Weber is showing works of the past ten years, including work specially conceived for this show, which he condenses to form a kind of living organism.

Klaus Weber, born in 1967, lives and works in Berlin.



TILO SCHULZ
September 19 – November 9, 2008
Galerie


Tilo Schulz, STAGE DIVER, Secession, 2008, Photo: Pez Hejduk

The work of Tilo Schulz is characterised by the formal language of Modernism, the battle between Formalism and Realism during the Cold War, the border between high culture and popular culture, between architecture, design and art, issues of representation and of the display, as well as of the 'activation' of the viewer. His interest and the criticism expressed in his work of the (historical) debate between politically instrumentalised art under the formerly Totalitarian regimes of the East and the apparently free art of the West are closely tied to the artist's own biography. For the Secession Schulz has conceived an installation that adapts to the form of the exhibition space while simultaneously challenging the dogma of the white cube. In addition he uses the space within the space as a transformer, as an arena for the visitors intended to awaken memories and associations, and trigger self-reflection.

Invited by Sabine Bitter and Christian Teckert
Tilo Schulz, born in 1972, lives and works in Berlin.



multiplex fiction / RALO MAYER
September 19 – November 9, 2008
Grafisches Kabinett


Multiplex Fiction: HOW TO DO THINGS WITH WORLDS, 1, daegseingcny 2006 / Ralo Mayer, Martin Udovicic

What are the forms of action and cultural practices that are postulated by models of the world and miniature universes, such as encountered in science fiction literature? How far is the social organization and channeling of creativity and desire reflected in the construction and interpretation of models of the world like these? For some years now Ralo Mayer has been investigating these questions, in his research series HOW TO DO THINGS WITH WORLDS (working with Philipp Haupt and others). He has developed polyrhythmic narrative structures, in the form of scripts, performances, comic strips, and spatial scenes, which use a mix of fictional and documentary material to examine various model worlds and the concepts of space and time that appertain to them. Ralo Mayer continues this work for his exhibition in the Secession, which is presented in the framework of the magazine multiplex fiction. He looks at BIOSPHERE 2, an artificial self-contained biosystem inside a glass dome that was built between 1987 and 1991 in Arizona. Here eight scientists lived for two years, testing out the vision and experiencing the failure of a world in miniature.

Invited by Sabine Bitter and Christian Teckert.
Ralo Mayer, born in 1976 in Eisenstadt, lives and works in Vienna.



SHARON LOCKHART
Nov 21, 2008 – Jan 18, 2009
Hauptraum, Galerie, Grafisches Kabinett


Sharon Lockhart, LUNCH BREAK (Still), 2008

The Secession is presenting a solo exhibition of new films and photographs by the American artist Sharon Lockhart, who is seen as one of the main protagonists of recent conceptual photography and neo-structuralist film. Her formally stringent works frequently focus on everyday situations in complex social spaces and communities. Past films and photographic series such as GOSHOGAOKA, TEATRO AMAZONAS and PINE FLAT refer to structuralist films of the 1960s and 1970s, while simultaneously displaying a concern for anthropological and ethnographic methods. Her work is often based on intensive research and her own personal involvement with the people and communities she portrays. The new film and photographic installation LUNCH BREAK was made especially for this exhibition at the Secession. The two films and three sets of photographs made at a shipyard in the state of Maine, synthesize time, place and a unique cultural economy. Caught somewhat on the fence between modernist and post-modernist paradigms, the shipyard in question is a space fully inhabited by its workforce. In an extensive, slow tracking-shot, the film, LUNCH BREAK, brings viewers into this world over the course of a single break, while a companion film retains Lockhart’s traditionally static camera as workers exit the shipyard over the course of a single workweek. The photographic works in the exhibition each represent a different aspect of the workers’ relationship to this time and place.

Sharon Lockhart, born in 1964 in Norwood/Massachusetts, lives and works in Los Angeles.



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:
 
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