Slices of life: Blueprints of the Self in Painting
January 19 – April 9, 2005
Opening reception: January 18, 2005, 6 pm – 8 pm
The Austrian Cultural Forum New York
11 East 52nd Street
New York City
T 212-319-5300
Gallery hours: Monday – Saturday, 10 am – 6 pm
SLICES OF LIFE: BLUEPRINTS OF THE SELF IN PAINTING opens at the Austrian Cultural Forum on January 18, 2005. The group exhibition, on view through April 9, 2005, examines figurative approaches to painting in contemporary visual arts. Combining the works of artists from Austria and the U.S., SLICES OF LIFE treats artistic practice as an individual and intimate medium for developing a narrative picture of our current living environment and for critically reacting to social and economic developments.
Works by:
Amy Cutler
Plamen Dejanoff
Nicole Eisenman
Johanna Kandl
Elke Krystufek
Muntean/Rosenblum
Katrin Plavcak
Lisa Ruyter
Markus Schinwald
Ena Swansea
Nicola Tyson
Gregor Zivic
Concentrating on the physical aspect in painting, the works in the exhibition emphasize the fragility of the human body in order to grasp the complexity of life with its diverging lifestyles and cultural practices. The choice of works deliberately focuses on a younger generation of artists who express themselves and their preoccupations through this traditional medium. While most of the artists clearly rely on painting as a strongly personal tool for realizing their unique expressive potential, the exhibition also includes the work of artists who use painting to convey pictorial information in combination with other media and conceptual orientations.
SLICES OF LIFE mirrors a rich diversity of perspectives: The timelessness and yet generation-specific profile of a world interpreted in terms of media trends provides the context for explorations of current conceptions of modernity, revealing lifestyle variations as models of social functioning. Juxtaposition of gender stereotypes, slogans, displaced social settings, and the market as a model of misunderstood emancipation are used to examine the social and political role of the self as an economically instrumentalized unit. Reflecting very personal and intimate approaches to the body, from the depiction of explicit body positions and performative acts to the dissolution and distortion of body parts, some paintings enter the innermost realms of the self. In other works, the subconscious elements of personal introspection become manifest.
SLICES OF LIFE continues ACF’s focus on the relationships between individualism and society, society and economy, economy and media as well as media and lifestyle.
The exhibition is curated by Karin Pernegger and Walter Seidl. Its spatial adaptation has been provided by the Vienna-based architecture and artist collaborative team Nicole Six & Paul Petritsch.
An exhibition catalogue with a preface by Christoph Thun-Hohenstein and essays by Walter Seidl and Rainer Metzger will be published in conjunction with the exhibition.
We gratefully acknowledge the support provided by Zumtobel Lighting and Austrian Airlines.
Admission to the exhibition is free.
