Exhibition Archive
LITERATURE, PERFORMANCE, PHOTOGRAPHY, ART. The Wiener Gruppe and an international context.
Duration from: 20 March – 16 May 2015
Based on the Wiener Gruppe and its members H. C. Artmann, Friedrich Achleitner, Konrad Bayer, Gerhard Rühm, and Oswald Wiener, presented through one of the most comprehensive photographic documentaries by Franz Hubmann, the exhibition shows additional Austrian artists from this circle and its successors in comparision with international positions.
Belonging to the most important contemporaries of the group are Marc Adrian, Kurt Kren, Ernst Jandl, Dieter Roth, Dominik Steiger, followed by the actionists Günter Brus, Otto Muehl, Hermann Nitsch, and Rudolf Schwarzkogler. In an international context, the circle further includes artists Robert Cumming, Hamish Fulton, Bruce Nauman, Carolee Schneeman, or William Wegman, who integrate the elements of performance, photography, and literature into their work. As representatives of the next generation, ranging from Hans Weigand, Franz West and Heimo Zobernig up to the contemporary artists Christian Eisenberger, Zenita Komad, and not least the group Gelitin with its “Kakabet.”
The members of the Wiener Gruppe wanted a radical break with the traditional view of art and, as Hubert Klocker explained in 1998, they saw art as representing systems of social and political reality and behavior and they tried to intervene in these processes of communication. […] Along with interventions of a language-critical nature, there were ‘non-lingual’ performances that presented taboo areas. The ‘Piano Interactivities’ (Klavierzertrümmerung) was written into art history as an anticipation of Viennese and international Actionism. […] The body in its pure physicality and not as a signifier was presented provocatively by Bayer and Wiener, in reference to body building and also to what we know today as international body art, which was to begin just a few years later. […] There were attempts to present—in equal treatments of—objects, photos, films, and actors. Other attempts went in the direction of mechanized and automated object-theater.
The group’s best-known theater events are the two literary cabarets of 1958 and 1959, performed by Achleitner, Rühm, Wiener, Bayer and several other actors. The literary cabarets brought together all forms of theater into one concentrated form. […] There were chansons and shocking actions, such as the famous Piano Interactivities; dance improvisation, exhibition of objects in a kind of object theater, poetry reading, projections, films, and readings, music on various instruments and classical piano music, sound, and recordings of sound collages interchanged in their performance.
Many ideas remained at the conceptual level back then. As we know, the Wiener Gruppe dissolved at the beginning of the 1960s.
(Quoted from the lecture by Evelyn Deutsch-Schreiner: “Wirklichkeitsinterventionen. Performative Provokationsästhetiken der Wiener Gruppe als Reaktion auf das starre kulturelle Klima der Nachkriegszeit”.)
Exhibition Archive
April 24 - August 6 2024
March 15 - 17 2024
January 18 - March 31 2024
November 16 - 19 2023
September 13 - October 31 2023 > prolonged until Dez. 24, 2023
September 21 - October 20 2023
May 16 - July 28 2023
March 2 - April 22 2023
February 16 - April 22 2023
October 7 2022 - January 21 2023
Septbember 6 - October 1, 2022
June 30 - September 3, 2022
May 26 - June 25, 2022
February 16 - May 7, 2022
December 15, 2021 - January 29, 2022
November 10 - 27, 2021
July 6 - September 25, 2021
March 17 - June 18, 2021
November 4, 2020 - February 27, 2021
September 19 - October 31, 2020
June 5 - September 12, 2020
January 9 - February 15, 2020 > prolonged until Feb. 29, 2020
December 6 - 21, 2019
November 19 - December 1, 2019
November 19 - December 21, 2019
September 5 - October 26, 2019
September 5 - October 26, 2019
June 29 - August 31, 2019
4.05. - 15.06.2019__PROLONGED UNTIL June 29!
Mar 15 - Apr 27, 2019
Jan 18 - Feb 21, 2019
Jan 11, 2019 at 7p.m.
Jan 18, 2018 - Feb 16, 2019 > prolonged until March 9!
Nov 9, 2018 - Jan 8, 2019
Nov 15 - Dec 8, 2018
Oct 19 - Nov 3, 2018 | World premiere Thursday, October 18, 2018 at 6 p.m.
Aug 29 - Oct 13, 2018
Opening: • May 24, 2018 • Exhibition duration: May 25 - Aug 4, 2018
Apr 5 – May 19, 2018
Exhibition: February 15 – March 17, 2018
Thurs, January 18, 2018, 3 - 9 p.m.
Festival, Sunday, December 17, 2017, from 6 p.m. • 19.12.2017–27.01.2018
FESTIVAL AND PRESENTATION, November 16, 2017, at 7pm
Concert date: Thurs., June 1, 2017, at 7 p.m. • June 2 – September 9, 2017
Apéro: Sat, March 16, 2017, 11–3 • Duration: 21.03.–20.05.2017
Opening: 26.01.2017, 7 p.m. • 27.01.–07.03.2017
Concert & Performance & party: Sat, December 17, 2016, 7:30 p.m. • Exhibition duration: 18.12.2016–18.01.2017
Opening: Thu, 10 November • Exhibition duration: 11 November – 10 December 2016
Concert: Thu, 20 October, 7:30 p.m.
until the end of September 2016
Exhibition: 5 July – 9 September 2016
Exhibition: 20 May – 25 June 2016
Exhibition: 11 Feb – 7 May 2016
Exhibition: 18 Dec 2015 – 31 Jan 2016
Concert: Wed. November 11, 2015, at 7:30 p.m.
Exhibition: 6 Nov – 5 Dec 2015
Duration from: 20 March – 16 May 2015
Saturnalia festival: 17.12.2014 • 19.12.2014-14.02.2015
21st February – 26th April 2014