Exhibitions 2011

LIFE-FORM in the ART FORMAT
Surrealism on Display
in Art of This Century

Opening on 30 May 2011, at 7 p.m.
Kiesler Foundation Vienna, Mariahilferstraße 1b, 1060 Vienna
May 31, 2011 – January 14, 2012

Frederick Kiesler’s design for Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century Gallery in New York in 1942 counts among the most exciting stagings of art from the past century. This pioneering exhibition design is now on show for the first time in Austria in the form of a walk-in model on a scale of 1: 3: suspended on steel holders, unframed pictures float freely in space, specially developed items of furniture serve now as art displays, now as seats for visitors, sound installations and dramatic lighting enhance the effects of the theatrical presentation of surrealist works. In an effort to fuse painting, sculpture and architecture into one, Kiesler created a universe of art that is a source of inspiration for artists, curators and viewers even today.

A richly illustrated booklet (English/German) is being published for the exhibition

Booklet here

Exhibition set-up: Olli K. Aigner with Museumstandards/Stefan Flunger, Gerhard Eiter, Oliver Ottenschläger

KATHARINA HEINRICH _ warp and weft

Opening: March 3, 2011 at 7 p.m.
Kiesler Foundation Vienna, Mariahilfer Straße 1b, 1060 Vienna
4/3/2011 - 20/4/2011, Monday-Friday: 10 a.m.-5 p.m.

To create her variable spatial bodies Katharina Heinrich uses the technique of weaving, that has been used for centuries to manufacture textures and which, in her enactment, is subject to strict rules. Heinrich sees the rhythmic action of this constant warp and weft as a “sculptural act” that joins her artistic ideas with precise methods of design in a manner which endows meaning. Accordingly, the artist refers to weaving as a conscious act which, in the course of creation, is, however, subject to the unchanging interlacing of horizontal and vertical tapes.
The construction “um auf ab RISS” is an attempt to convey the main parameters of Katharina Heinrich’s activities so as to add a linguistic coding to the exemplary presentation of her most important groups of works. The prepositions “um auf ab” suggest the conditions that evolve between the artist and the works that she creates. Specifically, the combination of these prepositions spotlights the moving mesh of relationships that takes place in the course of the process of artistic production between the producer and her products. Hence, the seemingly terse designation “um auf ab” also seems suitable to describe the dynamics of Heinrich’s actionist measuring of space. In combination with the noun “Riss” (plan, sketch, but also rip/tear), additional layers of meaning arise, among other things because the terms “Umriss” (outline, contour), “Aufriss” (elevation) and “Abriss” (old term for outline) denote special methods of representation employed in art and architecture. If we now turn these nouns into verbs, the change in meaning of each word also helps clarify the complex circumstances in Katharina Heinrich’s work. Even if, for example, the term “Umriss”, understood as “contour”, can never be equated with the content of “umreißen” (to outline in the sense of to sketch or summarise), there is nevertheless a link between these language terms that can be brought to bear when playfully savouring the various semantic contents. Katharina Heinrich’s objectified patterns of thought and ideas of space, that unfold before our eyes as corporeal bodies in the form of woven works, ingeniously translate these thought processes into elements that can be experienced with the senses.

The exhibition “KATHARINA HEINRICH _ um auf ab RISS / KATHARINA HEINRICH _ warp and weft” is accompanied by a booklet (German/English) with numerous illustrations and a text by Monika Pessler.

With the assistance of:
Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Art and Culture

Booklet here

COOPERATIONS WITH OTHER MUSEUMS:

Exhibition WE MAKE VERSIONS
at the Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster from October 8 to December 23, 2011

Taking the works of the artist Kerstin Stoll (*1969) as a starting point, the Westfälische Kunstverein will initiate an extensive project with different design models and “visionary” positions from art, science and related disciplines. Both contemporary artists as well as positions from the beginning of the 20th century are represented and all of the artists deal with production as well as a social approach to knowledge and awareness.

Exhibition The Modern and the Present.
Change of Century in the MACBA Collection
at the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) in Barcelona, from February 11 to September 9, 2011

This presentation from the MACBA Collection will be marked by a new thematic thread, a response to a hypothesis which argues that, in our cultural context, the aesthetic eruption of modernity began, not in the early-20th century, but in the 1950s. Among others the exhibition will feature a large selection of works on paper by Friedrich Kiesler, one of the fathers of experimental design. The relation between object, image, word and vision form a permanent leitmotiv in a show that compares and contrasts works by artists from different generations and backgrounds.

Exhibition DYNAMICS! Cubism / Futurism / KINETICISM
at the Lower Belvedere in Vienna , from February 10 to May 29, 2011

With its show DYNAMICS! Cubism / Futurism / KINETICISM, the Belvedere offers a comprehensive insight into abstraction as practiced in Vienna between 1919 and 1929, in the context of European Modernism. The phenomenon of Viennese Kineticism, which has hitherto attracted little attention internationally, is presented alongside masterpieces from all over Europe. From the Kiesler Foundation Vienna is image material from Friedrich Kiesler showing early stage settings and the space stage on loan.

Exhibition MONDRIAN / DE STIJL
at the Centre Pompidou Paris, from December 1, 2010 to March 21, 2011

This very ambitious exhibition project focuses on the social and cultural changes of the 20th century and on distinctive visions such as those of Piet Mondrian and the De Stijl movement. In cooperation with the Kiesler Foundation Vienna the exhibition rebuilt a on-to-one model of Frederick Kiesler’s “City in Space” (Paris 1925) showing a revival of the so called “total art” - the point of culmination of modernity.

Exhibition LINEA. From Outline to Action.
at the Kunsthaus Zug, Switzerland, until March 27, 2011

The line may be nothing more than a simple, fundamental element of the visual arts, but it has proven to be extremely diverse and complex in the course of art’s development.
Representative works will provide insight into the interdisciplinary relationships between the visual arts and architecture. The spectrum of this exhibition shows works from Edgar Degas and Egon Schiele up to Joan Miró, Frederick Kiesler and Jackson Pollock to Richard Tuttle and Roman Signer.

Exhibition Ideas not Theories: Artist and The Club, 1942-1962
at the Museum of Modern Art New York (MoMA), until February 28, 2011

Represented with not less than six works of Frederick Kiesler in the wide ranging presentation of “Abstract Expressionists of New York” at the Paul J. Sachs Prints and Drawing Galleries at the MoMA, this exhibition proofed the artist’s position and influence on the development of late modernity in the United States. Among others there could be seen Kiesler’s „Totem of All Religions“ (1947), as well as works to the icon of architecture the “Endless House” (1951-1960).

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