February 25 – May 15, 2011

May 27 – August 21, 2011

September 9 – November 20, 2011

December 2, 2011 – February 5, 2012

PERMANENT EXHIBITION

OPENING HOURS

GUIDED TOURS

Tuesday to Sunday 10.00 a.m. – 6.00 p.m.

Saturdays at 3.00 p.m. and Sundays at 11.00 a.m.

INÉS LOMBARDI
Past Present – Close and Distant
February 25 – May 15, 2011 (Opening: Thursday, February 24, 2011)
Hauptraum


Inés Lombardi, 2011

Inés Lombardi's repertoire includes photographs, videos, and installations as well as sculptures and objects. The point of departure for her multifaceted oeuvre is the assumption that human perception, far from being absolute, is a process that is subject to constant change. The artist probes the conditions under which a perceptive displacement can take place, and how such a shift can reveal the construction of reality. Of central importance in this context are questions immanent to art regarding presentation and representation. By repeatedly breaking with the various visual levels that define her work, Lombardi not only generates a series of references that can be continued ad infinitum, she also creates chains of associations that are open to rearrangement and interpretative extension. That is especially evident when, in a self-reflective move, she takes up individual aspects from earlier works and presents them in new variations: as an object, as a photograph of the object, or as a photograph of the object in a spatial situation also shown in the photographic representation of the object. This feedback mechanism and the recurrent break with it reveal the dynamism of perception in Inés Lombardi's works: for condensation and interconnectedness can give rise to innovation.

Inés Lombardi, b. São Paulo (BR) 1958, lives and works in Vienna (AT).



CHRISTOPH MEIER
February 25 – May 15, 2011 (Opening: Thursday, February 24, 2011)
Gallery


Christoph Meier, ohne Titel (Filmsetperformancebühnefilm), 2009, Performance, Installation, 35mm-Film, Courtesy Christoph Meier

Christoph Meier's art focuses on the performative and narrative potentials of his media. The 35mm film Filmsetperformancebühnefilm ( Filmsetperformancestagefilm , 2009), for instance, shows a crew, unaided by any script, filming itself during work on a film production. In the work, which was realized during Meier's final examination at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, both the actors and the examination committee become self-observing elements in the filmic action. In his installations and sculptural arrangements, Meier uses photography equipment, presentation furniture, byproducts of creative processes discarded by fellow artists, and everyday objects, rearranging these elements, divorced from their original contexts, in open compositions. The installation Setting #17 (2010) consists of an arrangement of five different projectors; their individual images combine to create a complete picture whose painterly quality derives from the different color temperatures of the projectors. The situations Meier fashions and stages are defined, on the one hand, by the self-referential aspect of a geometric and abstract formal vocabulary; on the other hand, the objects he uses make them appear to be representations of a plot. On several occasions, Meier opened the performative work with his objects to viewers, allowing them to participate in the creative process and his artistic method.

Christoph Meier, b. Vienna (AT) 1980, lives and works in Vienna (AT).



ALFONS EGGER
February 25 – May 15, 2011 (Opening: Thursday, February 24, 2011)
Grafisches Kabinett


Alfons Egger, NEU-GÖTZENS, 1976, Foto: Beatrix Sunkovsky

Drawings between Dadaism and concrete poetry, transgressive performances, and interventions aiming to create a sense of community—these elements are constants in Alfons Egger's oeuvre, as are suggestive dream-images and fictional characters. At a time when the performative potential of the stage is once again gaining ground in spaces dedicated to the visual arts, his is an early position that has positively been waiting to articulate itself afresh. Alfons Egger's work is distinguished by its high degree of complexity and the dense use of media. Since the early 1970s, the artist has worked with fragments from everyday life, which he interweaves with elements of his own biography to create a system of references that challenges the beholder in forever new ways—an effect to which the openness of his work to various interpretations contributes as well. Creating oversized letters out of foamed plastic, he installs formulae such as NUR SCHAUEN (JUST LOOK, 2006) in various spatial situations: be it in a department store about to undergo renovation, where the work suggests the idea of a restriction on consumerism; be it in a booth at an art fair, where the string of letters aims at questions immanent to art about the perception of images. For the exhibition in the Secession's Grafisches Kabinett, Alfons Egger is developing a space-specific installation, confronting beholders with an ephemeral verbal donation that, on a conscious as well as an unconscious level, once again underlines the state of subtle suspension characteristic of his creative production.

Alfons Egger, b. Haiming (AT) 1952, lives and works in Vienna.



Stephen Prina
As He Remembered It
May 27 – August 21, 2011 (Opening: Thursday, May 26, 2011)
Main Room


Stephen Prina, Exquisite Corpse: The Complete Paintings of Manet, 1991, Courtesy Galerie Gisela Capitain, Köln

The American artist, musician, and composer Stephen Prina appropriates the works of other artists. The spectrum of his references includes theoretical, literary, and artistic models ranging from Theodor W. Adorno to Felix Gonzales-Torres, from pop music to the sonatas of Ludwig van Beethoven. By restaging the original material, transposing it into other media or taking up individual motifs and varying structures, Prina creates multifaceted systems of reference in which personal, art-historical and musical narratives enrich one another. Exquisite Corpse: The Complete Paintings of Manet (since 1988), for instance, is based on the pictures of the Impressionist painter Édouard Manet. Prina's graphical appropriation takes up the formats of the art-historical originals, but then replaces the pictorial content with monochrome surfaces. Stephen Prina's method, which explicitly combines various media, is moreover distinguished by open work structures that are subject to ongoing elaboration. He often produces adaptations of his own works for specific exhibitions, recontextualizing them in forever new ways in order to explore the relationship between the original artistic intention and the subsequent life of his objects. Beyond the wealth of quotations and references, Prina also undertakes a general reflection on the potential of the referential mode as a method in art.

Stephen Prina, b. Galesburg, Ill. (US) 1954, lives and works in Los Angeles (US) and Cambridge, Mass. (US).



SASKIA OLDE WOLBERS
A Shot in the Dark
May 27 – August 21, 2011 (Opening: Thursday, May 26, 2011)
Gallery


Saskia Olde Wolbers, Pareidolia, 2011, 12 min video, Courtesy Maureen Paley, London

Bizarre free-floating narratives and hallucinatory visuals are the defining characteristics of Saskia Olde Wolbers' video works. Situated somewhere between illusion and reality, the narratives are based loosely on newspaper reports, documentaries or conversations from everyday life. The artist de-familiarizes and fictionally expands these sources and detaches the narrative from the imagery through the use of an off-screen voice. The oscillation between imagination and reality is heightened by monochromatic visual universes, which seem computer generated but are meticulously constructed scale models. Olde Wolbers' sets are miniature worlds, fabricated out of unusual materials such as fishing line, memory wire and cod liver oil pills, to form enclosed spaces and mysterious landscapes that recall the unreal worlds of Science Fiction. The sets are submerged in tanks filled with water and paint, and filmed using slow tracking shots. Olde Wolbers will be showing three works; Placebo , 2002, about a fake doctor, Trailer , 2005, and a new piece Pareidolia, 2010, which features animatronic birds and is set in 1930's Japan, relating the story of a German university professor being introduced to the world of Zen Archery. The exhibition at the Secession is the artist's first solo show in Austria.

Saskia Olde Wolbers, born in Breda (NL) in 1971, lives and works in London (GB).



WADE GUYTON
Zeichnungen für ein kleines Zimmer
May 27 – August 21, 2011 (Opening: Thursday, May 26, 2011)
Grafisches Kabinett


Wade Guyton, Untitled, 2006

Wade Guyton's artworks bear the traces of the accidents of automated production. An Epson inkjet printer reproduces nonrepresentational compositions, primarily in black and shades of gray . Circles, squares, stripes, oversized sans-serif typography. The abstraction the artist implements using standardized word processing, graphic design, and digital printing software is heightened by variations in the quality produced by the printing technology: tears, folds, now more, now less color on the canvas, saturation issues, and defects—every printing process represents a new blurring of authorship. Wade Guyton's works, which the artist often presents in site-specific installations tailored to the particular exhibition space, recall Jackson Pollock's production aesthetic. But even in his choice of media and instruments, Guyton marks his distance from any purist discourse on painting: prefabricated support media whose maximum width is determined by industry norms as well as thoroughly regulated software and color variations that more or less defy individual decision-making on the part of the artistic subject. Wade Guyton weaves a web of referential systems that must gesture toward the "real" world in order to stand in its ground in that world. For his exhibition in the Secession's Graphisches Kabinett, the artist is developing new works.

Wade Guyton, born in Hammond, Ind. (US) in 1972 lives and works in New York City (US).



DIE FÜNFTE SÄULE
September 9 – November 20, 2011 (Opening: Thursday, September 8, 2011)
Hauptraum, Gallery, Grafisches Kabinett


Image concept by Moritz Küng and Heimo Zobernig with permission to use two photos of the main gallery of the Secession (1986) by Margherita Spiluttini

With: Luz Broto (E), Peter Downsbrough (USA), Dora Garcia (E), Guillaume Leblon (F), Joëlle Tuerlinckx (B), Cerith Wyn Evans (UK), Heimo Zobernig (A) plus Adolf Krischanitz (A), Moritz Küng (CH), Ferdinand Schmatz (A), Margherita Spiluttini (A)

Since the overall renovation of the Secession building, undertaken in 1986 by the architect Adolf Krischanitz, its most significant structural elements comprise the four central columns in the main gallery. Originally made of nickel steel and brass, the columns have since 1989 often been covered, and, since 1991, they've been painted completely in white, probably in an effort to neutralize their willful presence as a misunderstood Otto Wagner quotation. For his exhibition, curator Moritz Küng takes these four columns as his point of departure, and "retroactively refurbishes" them to show the original shine they had twenty years ago. At the same time, he has selected newly produced or reconstructed works by seven artists spanning three generations, which are placed in this field of tension, allowing them to resonate associatively with the architecture, history, and culture of the Secession.

The symbolic fifth column thus stands for the realization and revitalization of the genius loci, which, consequently, also demonstrates a new interpretation of presentness and construction, of renovation, repair, supplementation, and adaptation, and ultimately also a new modernization.

Accompanying the exhibition are a catalogue with exhibition views, photographed by Margherita Spiluttini and with text contributions by Moritz Küng, András Pálffy and Ferdinand Schmatz (30 September 2011) as well as the artist books by Peter Downsbrough: a place—Wien (8 September 2011) and Joëlle Tuerlinckx: Les moments d’espace (17 November 2011).


Program:

Friday, 9 September 2011, 6:00 p.m.: exhibition discussion with Moritz Küng and Ferdinand Schmatz,
moderated by Gabriele Mackert. An event organized by Friends of the Secession

Thursday, 17 November 2011, 6:00 p.m.: presentation of the artist book Les moments d’espace
and lecture / performance Les moments d’espace. Lecture for youtube in 578 panels by Joëlle Tuerlinckx



DAVID MALJKOVIĆ
Exhibitions for Secession
December 2, 2011 – February 5, 2012 (Opening: Thursday, December 1, 2011)
Hauptraum


David Maljković, Retired Form, 2008, all images courtesy artist and Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam; Georg Kargl, Vienna; Metro Pictures, New York; Sprueth Magers, Berlin, London

The collages, films, and architectural mises-en-scène of the Croatian artist David Maljković form part of the current critical engagement with modernism. Maljković turns his attention to sculptural and architectonic symbols that, against the backdrop of Yugoslav socialism, signified the dawn of a new era: Vojin Bakic's monument to the victims of World War II; the Italian pavilion at the Zagreb trade fairground; the works of EXAT 51, a group of experimental architects and artists who championed abstraction and the synthesis of art and social context in the early 1950s. Maljković renegotiates the significance of his native country's historic, cultural, and theoretical heritage by relating it to the present and the possibilities of the future. In his collages, he often combines historic views of powerfully symbolic monuments with contemporary photographs; the settings of his films, by contrast, function as projection screens for a younger generation's ideas about progress, exuding an atmosphere of wasted potential and resigned optimism. Maljković's works probe the dialectic between innovations that seem to have been forgotten, the ruinous present state of projects once created amid great euphoria, and the present as an era of transitions and new beginnings.

David Maljković, b. Rijeka (HR) 1973, lives and works in Zagreb (HR).



ATTILA CSÖRGÕ
December 2, 2011 – February 5, 2012 (Opening: Thursday, December 1, 2011)
Gallery


Attila Csörgõ, Occurence Graphs III, 1998, Courtesy of the artist and Galerija Gregor Podnar, Berlin-Ljubljana, Photo: József Rosta

The Hungarian artist Attila Csörgõ's photographic, sculptural, and graphical works use humor and irony to introduce the beholder to questions from the natural sciences—with results that are often unexpected and, more importantly, amusing. Csörgõ builds experimental arrangements to explore phenomena from kinetics, optics, or geometry. The artist's oeuvre thus probes questions of human perception and ideas about the construction of the world. By using photography, for instance, to capture the light emitted by motion sequences or energetic processes, Csörgõ enables us to see phenomena that are imperceptible under ordinary conditions, rendering us keenly aware of what we take for granted. The artist builds his apparatuses out of everyday objects and materials. For the sculpture Magnet Spring (1991), for instance, Csörgõ relied on the magic of magnetism. Twelve glass panes were held upright by nothing but the force of repulsion between numerous magnets in the shape of ice hockey pucks that seemed to float. For Moebius Space (2006), the artist developed a mechanism for a tracking shot that enabled him to create a photographic Moebius strip—a loop in which the two ends of a film are still an exact match after a rotation of 180°. At the Secession, Attila Csörgõ will present a new work.

Friday, December 2, 2011, 5:00 p.m.: exhibition discussion with Attila Csörgõ and Christian Höller
An event organized by Friends of the Secession

Attila Csörgõ, b. Budapest (HU) 1965, lives and works in Budapest (HU).



LECIA DOLE-RECIO
December 2, 2011 – February 5, 2012 (Opening: Thursday, December 1, 2011)
Grafisches Kabinett


Lecia Dole-Recio, Untitled (pch.crvs.rd.crdbrd.cnvs.), 2010, Foto: Fredrik Nilsen, Courtesy Richard Telles Fine Art, Los Angeles

At the center of Lecia Dole-Recio's paintings stands the materiality of the support medium, which she subjects to both surface and interventive manipulation. Instead of relying solely on prefabricated canvases for her works, Dole-Recio creates her own surfaces: using glue, she collages paper, various kinds of cardboard, and parchment to produce a substratum on which she then layers color, and after this painterly treatment she deconstructs the result by cutting it to pieces. The saturation and composition of the colors and the constructivist appeal of the brushwork contribute as much to the quality of her work as the depth of the positive and negative spaces she uncovers with the knife. The artist transforms the support media of her paintings into figuratively as well as literally multilayered constructions that defy unambiguous categorization. They forcefully suggest architecture, urban ensembles seen in a bird's eye view, mapping. But the arrangements of colors, materials, and spaces also bring music to mind, models for the orchestration of musical experiments whose rhythmic composition is inspired by the depths of painting. For her exhibition in the Secession's Grafisches Kabinett, Lecia Dole-Recio is developing a new series of works.

Lecia Dole-Recio, b. San Francisco (US) 1971, lives and works in Los Angeles (US).



PERMANENT EXHIBITION
Gustav Klimt: THE BEETHOVEN FRIEZE



OPENING HOURS
Tuesday to Sunday 10.00 a.m. – 6.00 p.m.


GUIDED TOURS
Saturdays at 3.00 p.m. and Sundays at 11.00 a.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