Überschönheit (Excessive Beauty)
25 April–21 June 2015
Nedko Solakov: Improvements
25 April 2015–31 January 2016
Emily Wardill: The Palace
25 April–21 June 2015
Openings: Friday April 24, 8pm
Artist roundtable (open to the public): 6:30pm
Salzburger Kunstverein
Künstlerhaus
Hellbrunner Straße 3
5020 Salzburg
Austria
All exhibitions curated by Séamus Kealy, Director, Salzburger Kunstverein.
Überschönheit
Main Hall
“Salzburg is too beautiful.”
–Anonymous Salzburger
This project explores variations on the theme of Überschönheit (Excessive Beauty). International artists have been invited by Séamus Kealy to include artwork that, for them, has a relationship to excesses of beauty.
Beauty is a subject pondered and written upon since early times. There has always been an obsession with monitoring, measuring and understanding beauty. What happens when one is overloaded with it? It has never been so predominately at our disposal, and may likely continue to be so on an increasingly exponential level. Can beauty also transform into something beyond aesthetics when it is, as WB Yeats wrote, a “terrible beauty?” This term was itself used as the title for two biennales of contemporary art (Lyon Biennale and Dublin Contemporary, coinciding in 2011 with the very same title), and appears symptomatic of our times, whether accidentally, ironically or not.
The exhibition design is taken on by artist Tilo Schulz as his contribution to the project, where audiences must enter the exhibition from a particular entrance and wander from artwork to artwork, as the entire exhibition is housed in a structure built within the main exhibition space of the Salzburger Kunstverein. All other artists have contributed works that explore this notion of excessive beauty in a number of varying permutations.
Participating artists:
Jesse Darling (UK), Nilbar Güreş (Turkey/Austria), João Maria Gusmão & Pedro Paiva (Portugal), Ragnar Kjartansson (Iceland), Schirin Kretschmann (Germany), Ursula Mayer (Austria/UK), Isabel Nolan (Ireland), Aïda Ruilova (US), Tilo Schulz (Germany), Amalia Ulman (US), Nicole Wermers (Germany), Balint Zsako (US)
Nedko Solakov: Improvements
Ringgalerie
The artwork of Bulgarian artist Nedko Solakov is known for its wit, humour and accessibility. For his project for the Ringgalerie, Solakov has chosen to reverse the roles of artist and curator. He will thus curate paintings by the Director of the Salzburger Kunstverein, made when he had previously practised as an artist. Placing the paintings under Plexiglas boxes, Solakov invites audiences to draw/correct/comment upon the works and thus to “improve” them.
Nedko Solakov, born 1957 in Cherven Briag, Bulgaria, lives and works in Sofia.
Emily Wardill: The Palace
Kabinett
Emily Wardill’s films investigate the complexities of communication and representation, the limitations and imprecision of language, and the individual nature of imagination. Emily Wardill will present a recent film in the Kabinett, The Palace, presented in English and in German (as produced by the Salzburger Kunstverein), alongside two works from the series “Fire Shakes Itself in the Air.”
Emily Wardill, born 1977 in England, lives and works in Lisbon.
