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

CURRENT EXHIBITIONS

KATRIN PLAVČAK Feb 20 – Apr 13, 2009	KLAUS MOSETTIG Feb 20 – Apr 13, 2009	HANNES ZEBEDIN Feb 20 – Apr 13, 2009	PAWEL ALTHAMER Apr 25 – June 21, 2009
THE DEATH OF THE AUDIENCE July 3 – Aug 30, 2009	MICOL ASSAËL Sep 11 – Nov 8, 2009	CINEPLEX Sep 11 – Nov 8, 2009	MARC CAMILLE CHAIMOWICZ Nov 20, 2009 – Jan 24, 2010
MICHAEL ASHKIN Nov 20, 2009 – Jan 24, 2010	MONA VATAMANU/FLORIN TUDOR Nov 20, 2009 – Jan 24, 2010

KATRIN PLAVČAK
Hauptraum
Feb 20 – Apr 13, 2009


Katrin Plavčak, Fishgarden, 2007, oil on canvas, 70 x 100 cm

Katrin Plavčak’s figurative painting is a form of expression based on collecting and quoting motifs transported by the media. By means of painting she transforms observations and finds, combines them with invented elements, distorts, remixes and re-stages them. A characteristic of her depictions of amorphous urban spaces, extraterrestrials, utopian design and the associated life forms is an aesthetic effect between realism and abstraction, vision and banality, fantasy and caricature. Contrary to the presumptions inherent in painting and its history in the twentieth century, often claimed to have ended, Katrin Plavčak works towards removing the boundaries of the medium. On the one hand she keeps painting open towards the mediatised environment, on the other she develops space-dominating pictorial concepts by means of juxtaposition and contrast, increasingly expanding painting into the realm of sculpture. A predominant topos of her latest image worlds is the conquest of new spaces, as manifested, for example, in the colonisation of foreign countries, in space travel or in evolutionary biology.

Katrin Plavčak, born in Gütersloh in 1970, studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and now lives in Berlin and Vienna.



KLAUS MOSETTIG
Galerie
Feb 20 – Apr 13, 2009


Klaus Mosettig, Apollo 11 (Detail), 2008, drawing, 153 x 1000 cm

Klaus Mosettig works in such media as film, sculpture and drawing, which each manifest different aspects of the same conceptual strategy. The relationship between the artist and the art work, processes defined in terms of time and space, transformation and change are important parameters of his work. In some cases Mosettig’s sculptures, for which he has worked, for example, with living apple trees or a colony of ants, develop over the course of several years and are constantly changing. In his drawings, that he often conceives as extensive series, Mosettig in many cases places the focus on seemingly unimportant aspects such as the projected dirt on slide projector lenses or cowpats. Down to the last detail he describes the individual and non-identical nature of his motifs by means of an analytical grid structure of fine, diagonal strokes, with which he mimetically scans his source images. In this respect, the critical re-evaluation of economies of attention goes hand in hand with a questioning of artistic subjectivity and personal style which ultimately contributes substantially to the dispositif of the drawing medium.

Klaus Mosettig, born in Graz in 1975, lives and works in Vienna.



HANNES ZEBEDIN
Grafisches Kabinett
Feb 20 – Apr 13, 2009


Hannes Zebedin, Present Perfect, 2004, Installation, dimensions variable

For Hannes Zebedin political activism and the idea of art production as political action are the foundation of his keen interest in structural and systems analysis and in the interplay of the individual with social and urban spaces. In his pointedly staged installations, interventions and performances in the public space he explores the possibilities of individual articulation in the face of other developments in civil society that are focused in terms of group dynamics, for example gentrification, globalisation, migration and their consequences. As a widely travelling artist, he takes advantage of the possibilities of temporary action in new settings from the perspective of the stranger’s eye, at the same time self-reflectively questioning the sustainable potential of his interventions. At the moment, Hannes Zebedin is increasingly focusing on the form of the manifesto. In his contemporary interpretation he looks for possibilities of finding a clear position of a political or artistic attitude that forms a contrast to the post-modern approach of “anything goes”.

Hannes Zebedin, born in Lienz in 1976, lives and works in Vienna.



PAWEL ALTHAMER
Hauptraum
Apr 25 – June 21, 2009


Pawel Althamer, Astronauta 2, 1997, photograph, courtesy the artist, Foksal Gallery Foundation, Warsaw and neugerriemschneider, Berlin

Pawel Althamer develops his poetic enactments, interventions and sculptures from a precise observation and analysis of everyday situations and social conventions. Many times he has invited other people to take part in his projects or asked them to assume different roles so as to negotiate everyday life and the socio-economic conditions of certain (fringe) groups. As a re-assessment of “invisible theatre” he often sees the public space in this context as a stage, focusing on the seemingly unspectacular in order to emphasise or shift the experience of a certain reality by means of minimal manipulations of the existing structures. The aspect of realism also runs through his figurative sculptures, in which – often in the form of self-portraits – he deals with such questions of human existence as identity and alienation, loneliness and isolation.

Pawel Althamer, born in Warsaw in 1967, lives and works in Warsaw.



THE DEATH OF THE AUDIENCE
Curated by Pièrre Bal-Blanc
All Exhibition Rooms
July 3 – Aug 30, 2009


The Death of the Audience, installation views, Secession, 2009, Photo: Wolfgang Thaler

In what way are artistic positions from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s relevant to the current situation? The international group exhibition The Death of the Audience looks into the radicalism, utopian and anti-utopian potential of the strategies and form-findings of this period by recontextualising older and recent works of the generation(s) of the now over-fifties and establish a reference to the productions of younger artists. The French curator Pierre Bal-Blanc was invited by the artists’ association to explore this question and develop an exhibition for all of the Secession rooms.

Pierre Bal-Blanc is director of the Centre d’Art Contemporain (CAC) in Brétigny near Paris, where he has carried out major solo exhibitions with David Lamelas, Theresa Margolles, Roman Ondák, Markus Schinwald, Santiago Sierra, Franz Erhard Walther, Clemens von Wedemeyer and Artur Zmijewski, among others. In his international travelling exhibition series La Monnaie Vivante/Living Currency he negotiates current and historical analyses of body and performative strategies in the visual arts.



MICOL ASSAËL
Hauptraum
Sep 11 – Nov 8, 2009


Micol Assaël, Eldfell, 2006, copper, 25 x 100 x 130 cm, courtesy ZERO, Milano

Based on a fascination with scientific theories and physical principles such as earthing, gravity or electromagnetism, Micol Assaël often amplifies physical phenomena in her site-specific environments and interventions. Her sparsely furnished installations run the gamut of sensorial perceptions, allowing unusual experiences. In correlation with invisible elementary forces and an unhinged causality, the effects of industrial apparatuses relating directly to the body often provoke the psychological tension of an unspecific threat and feelings of uncertainty and vulnerability. In this way, Micol Assaël’s minimal arrangements refer to the potential horrors of technology, while at the same time, by dint of their specific materiality, theatricality and site-specificity, re-exploring the paradigms of Minimal Art, Conceptual Art and Arte Povera at the interfaces between science, technology, art and poetry.

Micol Assaël, born in Rome in 1979, lives and works in Rome and Moscow.



CINEPLEX
Selected by Norbert Pfaffenbichler and Lotte Schreiber
Galerie und Grafisches Kabinett
Sep 11 – Nov 8, 2009


Lotte Schreiber, Borgate, 2007, Filmstill

Austria has a vibrant experimental film scene. Works in this field are usually presented outside the established exhibition system, but are screened at the relevant international festivals. The Cineplex exhibition ventures to breach the gap between the largely separate spheres of the fine arts and experimental film, transforming the exhibition rooms of the Secession into a kind of multiplex cinema for this purpose. The show features experimental films and videos of recent date that examine the fundamental conditions of the film medium both with regard to technology and history and iconographic and dramaturgical conventions. The authors focus in-depth on the specific aspects of film itself, while quite naturally using the current possibilities of digital production methods.

Norbert Pfaffenbichler, born in Steyr in 1967 and Lotte Schreiber, born in Mürzzuschlag in 1971, live and work in Vienna.



MARC CAMILLE CHAIMOWICZ
Hauptraum
Nov 20, 2009 – Jan 24, 2010


Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Deux coiffeuses (peut-être pour adolescents), l’une habillée, l’une pas (Detail), 2008, wood, mirror and various objects, 125 x 143 x 50 cm

Marc Camille Chaimowicz made his mark in the early 1970s with environments and interactive performances, whose poetic nature sets them distinctly apart from the purist representations of concept art and minimal art. Today, the ambiguity of his interiors and objects between art, design and everyday culture, his sensitivity for profane, everyday rituals, and the interlaced autobiographical comments and updated tradition of dandyism are particularly important references for a younger generation of artists. Driven by the sustained interest in a sophisticated furnishing and lifestyle and the ambition of a total aesthetic, Marc Camille Chaimowicz’s recent artistic production features still-life-like arrangements, furniture sculptures, ornamental drawings and prototypes for decor fabrics, wallpapers and ceramics. His vocabulary of ornamental patterns and motifs refers to a bourgeois, at times old-fashioned finesse and plays with the ambiguity of real furnishings and domestic functional contexts.

Marc Camille Chaimowicz, born in post war Paris, lives and works in London and Burgundy.



MICHAEL ASHKIN
Galerie
Nov 20, 2009 – Jan 24, 2010


Michael Ashkin, Hiding places are many, escape only one, 2007-8, recycled cardboard (work in progress)

In his photographs and video works Michael Ashkin works on a new understanding of landscape that allows him to combine criticism and homage in a dialectic tension. A characteristic of his photographic surveys of desolate transit towns, devastated areas and dismal industrial wastelands is a documentary strategy with which he semantically opens up the depicted topographies and declares them to be places of projection, of rest and reflection. In the past few years, Michael Ashkin has been concentrating his reflection on the conditions in which a place evolves and how it is perceived above all on utopian spaces. In a model that he develops as an ongoing process, Adjnabistan – the name derives from the Arabic/Farsi “adjnabi” for “foreigner”, “stranger” or “other” and describes a land of impossible origin – he explores the logics of physical urban organisation between social ideals and structural necessities.

Michael Ashkin, born in Morristown/New Jersey in 1955, lives and works in New York.



MONA VATAMANU/FLORIN TUDOR
Grafisches Kabinett
Nov 20, 2009 – Jan 24, 2010


Mona Vatamanu/Florin Tudor, Long Live and Thrive Capitalism!, Periferic 8 Biennial, Iasi, 2008

The phenomena of forgetting and repressing recent history as a result of the dramatic political and social upheavals following the collapse of real communism in Romania are the focal issue in the works of Mona Vatamanu and Florin Tudor. The two artists often examine the trauma in post-socialist countries, that has frequently been noted in recent years, on the basis of architecture and urban planning. In their films, photo series and installations they focus with an almost archaeological methodology on the destruction of churches, monasteries and palaces in Romania by the former communist regime and the population’s apparent indifference and ignorance towards these processes. In highly symbolic actions of visualisation and reparation they speak out for a treatment and reappraisal of recent events.

Mona Vatamanu, born in Constanţa in 1968 and Florin Tudor, born in Geneva in 1974, live in Bucharest and have been working together since 2000.



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