The current exhibition follows the Belvedere 21 show “About the New. Young Scenes in Vienna” from 2019, explained Director General Stella Rollig during a press tour on Thursday. The current project follows on from this – with an extended view of Salzburg and Graz. Then as now, it was “an attempt at an interim assessment, an overview”. The start of the three-part series, which runs until January 2024, can be seen from Friday.
latent overload
It should be particularly dynamic, which is why a team of five curators selected artistic positions themselves on the one hand and invited art spaces to design sub-areas as they see fit on the other. The result is a multifaceted jumble of installation, painting, textiles, handicrafts and sound that is latently overwhelming at first. Only gradually can references be made and the stories behind the individual works emerge – probably best with a guided tour.
exhibition notice
“About the new. Scenes from Vienna and beyond” at Belvedere 21. Part 1: from Friday to July 2nd, Part 2: July 13th to October 15th, Part 3: October 26th to January 14th, 2024.
You quickly have your sights set on what is probably the most shrill contribution. Gabriele Edlbauer and Julia S. Goodman staged a cheese-eating competition with a stand, scenery painting, stuffed animals and an eerie priest figure. Cheerful and exuberant at first glance, a closer look reveals something horrible: people throw up, defecate and die. After all, the abstruse thesis is reflected here that lactose intolerance only plagues people who do not belong to the white dominant society, explained Andrea Kopranovic from the curatorial team.
Bubble Gum Tiles and the Awareness of Alexa
In general: The supposedly normal is of course questioned in many respects. In their multi-part installation, the duo Maggessi/Morusiewicz deals with, among other things, queer positions in Polish film from the 1960s to 1980s. Heti Prack, on the other hand, invents a whole narrative about a gay couple of craftsmen from Red Vienna in the 1930s around two of his stucco marble works, and Francesca Aldegani makes reference to non-Western religions and magical practices with her totems and banners made of textiles, reptile skin and glass eyes.
Artificial intelligence is just as much a topic in this hodgepodge as the question of land use. In her video work “Talk to me”, Hui Ye wants to find out whether Alexa is conscious, while Julia Haugeneder, with her “Juicy Fruit” tiles, alludes to the flavor of the same name from the chewing gum giant Wrigley’s and thereby poses the question of resources.
Convertible exhibition space
The exhibition architecture – designed by the AKT office, which also helped to design Austria’s appearance at this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale – does not specify a course. Paravan-like modules were attached to four chassis, which means that the setting can be adjusted again and again as the exhibition progresses or with parts two and three. At the same time, this creates many visual axes and connection options. “We wanted to get away from the ‘white cube’, from this trade fair architecture,” explained co-curator Ana Petrovic of APA.
There is also space for performances – for example when the Kunstraum school invites the audience to “Talking to strangers” on six fixed dates – a dialogue with an unknown person – or the Art-Space Memphis from Linz negotiates combat techniques and democratic processes.
Factory history in soaps
Ana de Almeida is less top-heavy. She presents 100 colorful soaps. It also contains the history of the Schicht factory, which became famous for its deer soap and the coconut oil product Ceres. The artist has cast snippets from advertising brochures, photos, label names, but also rubble and dust from the now closed factory. The work is called “From Fat and the City”.
