Exhibitions 2012

ANDREA ZITTEL _ ARTIST - ARCHITECT
Exhibition Opening during the ORF Long Night of the Museums
October 6, 2012, 6 pm

Mariahilfer Straße 1b, 1060 Vienna
Exhibition duration: 06.10.2012 - 12.01.2013

The exhibition ANDREA ZITTEL _ KÜNSTLERARCHITEKTIN is dedicated to this year’s Kiesler Prize winner. The chosen works reflect an ongoing creative process devoted above all to analysing and shaping our immediate environment. The exhibition at the Kiesler Foundation underlines the decision of the jury 2012 who selected ANDREA ZITTEL primarily for her experimental and innovative work that has extended the dialogue of contemporary art and ideas. In the spirit of Frederick Kiesler, her work is both intellectual and yet deals with real life situations and occurrences.

“However one of the most important goals of this work is to illuminate how we attribute significance to chosen structures or ways of life, and how arbitrary any choice of structure can be. I do not mean to deny the personal significance of these decisions, instead, I use my work in order to try to comprehend values such as ‘freedom’, ‘security’, ‘authorship’, and ‘expertis’.” (Andrea Zittel).

Booklet here

Daniel Hafner
REFLECTING ON ALL THINGS MERELY EXPERIENCED

Mariahilfer Straße 1b, 1060 Vienna
Exhibition duration: 16.05.2012 - 22.09.2012

Daniel Hafner’s art serves to explore our existence, more precisely, the perception of our being here. The artist, born in Styria in 1979, focuses his work on both natural and technical phenomena.
In visual and sculptural works, the artist arrives at the conviction that it is possible to derive from the formal correspondence between the digitisation of “sound” and “line” common properties of these sign systems. The signs belonging to sound and those belonging to gestures, Hafner maintains, are of a similar nature, and he transposes abstract actions into vectorial computer representations in order to translate them back into the realm of the hand-made or into three-dimensionality.

Daniel Hafner’s series of artistic experiments are not only capable of making us aware of the complex ways in which our phenomenal world functions. In addition, his seemingly simple viewing devices often unmask our experience as deceptive appearance. For example, the sense of sight or hearing may be separated from all other physical sensations in order to convey to us the perceived illusion of a busy country road in the exhibition, true to the motto: “Close your eyes and you’re there!”

Booklet here

SPACE HOUSE
Opening February 2, 2012 at 7 p.m.

Mariahilferstraße 1b/1 1060 Wien
Exhibition duration: 03.02.2012 - 04.05.2012

Frederick Kiesler’s Space House marks a point of no return in his work and in the architecture of the last century. Appearing like the utopian concept of a home, in its modernist form this architecture subverts not only the „International Style“ discourse as it was formulated in the early 1930’s in New York. With the model of the Space House, Kiesler also gives concrete expression to new design criteria in architecture that are pertinent more to the nature of space than the structure that encompasses it.
No wonder, then, that Kiesler’s thought “space is only space for someone who is moving in it” became essential to his designs. With the assistance of theoretician Laura McGuire, the Space House exhibition in the Kiesler Foundation Vienna now turns the focus on another milestone in the history of architecture.

Booklet here

Cooperations with other museums:

THE SCENERY EXPLODES
Frederick Kiesler - Architect and Visionary Theatre Designer
at the Austrian Theatre Museum, Vienna, from 25.10.2012 to 25.02.2013

An Exhibition of the Austrian Theatre Museum in cooperation with the
Kiesler Foundation Vienna

Curated by Barbara Lesák

more: : :

Exhibition DER ARCHITEKT - Geschichte und Gegenwart eines Berufsstandes
at the Pinakothek der Moderne, Architekturmuseum der Technischen Universität München, from 27.09.2012 to 03.02.2013

Although building is one of the oldest human activities and although architecture is said to be the mother of all arts, the work of the architect and his profession's history is only familiar to few. This exhibition presents for the first time the many facets of the profession architect: The development from master-builder to artist and from servant to organizer is equally addressed as the different understanding of the architect's function and status in various countries, culture areas and centuries.

From the Kiesler Foundation Vienna is image material on loan showing Friedrich Kiesler's early stage setting for "R.U.R.".

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Exhibition SPACE AFFAIRS

at the MUSA, Museum Startgalerie Artothek, Vienna, from 19.06. to 06.10.2012

Space itself has no form. Yet each of its affairs does have a form – affairs
that are as numerous as they are all-embracing. Everything that has
to be done (à faire), has to be done within and with space and is therefore
always an ‘affair of space’. At the same time, everything that has to
be done has to do with things. Affairs of space are always affairs with
things.

Against this background, the exhibition’s subject is space in its essence
as a constellation of relationships, and it stages this in its wide variety
of sensory-situational articulations. It is an illustrative kaleidoscope
of artistic explorations with an experimental character, which adds a
scientific dimension, and thus, out of affairs of space, the exhibition
generates a space of affairs (text by Marc Mer, excerpt).

Exhibition UTOPIA GESAMTKUNSTWERK
at the 21er Haus, Belvedere, Vienna, from 20.01.2012 to 20.05.2012

The exhibition Utopia Gesamtkunstwerk presents a contemporary perspective of the historical idea of the total work of art. With appropriate scepticism, artists have undertaken to review this legendary figure of thought, thereby casting a critical eye on the history of Modernism: with the upheaval caused by the avant-garde after 1918 and the work theories developed by Schwitters, Duchamp, or Artaud, a holistic and socially critical way of thinking set in as a relevant force.

The idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk, originally a purely aesthetic concept, underwent a redefinition aimed at a renewal of society through an art that was critical of the latter’s mechanisms and institutions.

Exhibition ERRE. Labyrinthine Variations
at the Centre Pompidou-Metz, from 12.09.2011 to 05.03.2012

ERRE follows Masterpieces ? as the second major thematic exhibition at the Centre Pompidou-Metz. This multidisciplinary group show develops the theme of the labyrinth to address questions of loss, drifting and deambulation, and their portrayal in contemporary art.

ERRE presents works by different generations of French and international artists, together with major figures from the collection of the Centre Pompidou – Musée National d'Art Moderne. The exhibition will also feature many works on loan from the Kiesler Foundation Vienna.

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"Andrea Zittel_Artist-Architect",
Photo: Daniel Hafner

Daniel Hafner, 2012
Photo: Bernd Hofbauer

"Daniel Hafner. Reflecting on all things merely experienced",
Photo: Daniel Hafner

"The Scenery Explodes",
Photo: Austrian Theatre Museum