Six Spring/Summer exhibitions

Grazer Kunstverein commissions, produces and presents contemporary art. It goes without saying that our actions, decisions, strategies and approach determine and demonstrate who we are as an organisation. We are compelled by artistic practices. We collaborate closely with artists, and are committed to supporting the realisation of new and ambitious works and projects. Above all we are convinced by the necessity of art.

Throughout 2018 we are looking to Ultimology—the study of that which is dead or dying, absent or endangered—as the conceptual anchor for a year of seasonal exhibitions, research projects, publications and events. As a methodology it serves as a way to think about what is present though a deeper understanding of what has come to an end. Throughout the year our engagement with Ultimology as a performative process, tool for conversation and way of thinking, will inform the development and presentation of new artistic work, projects and positions.

Carl Johan Högberg
She Who Speaks
March 9–May 19, 2018

Högberg is fascinated by 19th century surrealist muse Hélène Smith (1861–1929). She famously hosted séances during which she would speak in tongues, relay messages from distant realms, and even embody long gone historical figures. Her visions and actions have been interpreted by many, but never retold in her own words. Reaching across historical time, Högberg strikes a kinship with the lost voice of Smith, questioning as he does so, the validity of engaging trans-temporally with her legacy, and of becoming, through painting, tapestry and rolling walls, a contemporary medium through which to frame her story.

Niamh O'Malley
Foiled Glass
March 9–May 19, 2018

Glass is something we look through and look at, both a lens and an object. O’Malley explores this material paradox through sculpture, painting and moving image as part of her first major exhibition in Austria: Foiled Glass. The works on display focus their attention on the act of looking, demonstrating the artist’s analogue attempts to use looking as a way to capture, hold, frame, observe and understand. Full of reflection, both literal and metaphorical, filled with absence and framed by negative space, O’Malley’s work inspires pause, reflection, and reinterpretation by skilfully undermining and obscuring that which it appears to represent.

Nadia Belerique
On Sleep Stones
June 7–August 3, 2018

Belerique's summer residency in Graz sees the development of a new sculptural installation based on the language of photography, albeit deconstructed and abstracted from the more traditional image-making process. The title of her exhibition is drawn from a prose poem by Canadian author Anne Carson, from her book Short Talks (originally published in 1992). Short Talk On Sleep Stones ruminates on the last 30 years in the life of French sculptor Camille Claudel. Belerique’s ensuing installation haptically links psychic and physical space, engaging with the complex nature of time, visibility and memory through liquid light and plush fibres, while questioning the shadowy role of images and their performativity in contemporary culture. 

Christian Nyampeta
Words After the World
June 7–August 3, 2018

Currently preoccupied with the notion of "thinking" and "writing" Africa today, Nyampeta works across art, design and theory to explore the complexities of being in common. His film Words After the World was commissioned by Camden Arts Centre, developed during his residency and later shown in his solo exhibition at the museum. During that time Nyampeta organised a scriptorium, or working group, established to translate Francophone texts by philosophers such as Bourahima Ouattara. In Graz Nyampeta creates a screening area and a space for active translation and knowledge exchange. He asks: what happens if words and meaning were subjected to prohibition? What synonyms could be created to replace them? A Graz-based working group will be established to convene, discuss and translate throughout the duration of his exhibition.

Cesare Pietroiusti
Non-Functional Thoughts
June 7–August 3, 2018

Pietroiusti's handbook Non-Functional Thoughts will be reprinted for the first time in a bi-lingual German/English "double-decker" edition, in collaboration with Mark Pezinger Verlag. Pietroiusti’s background in psychology and interest in economics have informed his approach to art making. Non-Functional Thoughts was first published in 1997. It contains approximately 100 useless, unusual or incongruous ideas that may be realised as micro art projects by anyone. At a time when art is becoming increasingly instrumentalised, when people are being categorised and divided through polarising forces, Non-Functional Thoughts serves as a timely instructional pamphlet on how to reconnect with individuals, from an open-minded perspective that is playful, critical, and in danger of disappearing.

Triple Candie
If Michael Asher
Year-long research project
March 9, 2018–February 15, 2019

Triple Candie (Shelly Bancroft and Peter Nesbett) is a US-based, avant-garde curatorial production agency that collaborates with museums and contemporary art spaces on exhibitions about art but generally devoid of it. Throughout 2018 Triple Candie will produce a multi-layered investigation into the work and legacy of American conceptual artist Michael Asher (1943–2012), who often worked in the interstitial space between art and architecture. Triple Candie’s engagement with Grazer Kunstverein consists of several parts, including four speculative projects (institutional interventions) and a growing body of research. The four projects, to be realised sequentially throughout 2018, attempt to resurrect the lost experiential potentialities of Asher’s work, drawing on his methodologies to create new interventions in a new context. Triple Candie aims to critically examine, through an unorthodox approach and in the unique context of the Grazer Kunstverein, Michael Asher’s legendary practice in relation to such looming questions as: In death, what next? With an artist like Asher, whose site-specific work was destroyed when de-installed, how does one access and unravel his ideas after the fact?

Grazer Kunstverein is structurally supported by the city of Graz, the Federal Chancellery of Austria Arts and Culture Division, the province of Styria, legero united | con-tempus.eu, and its members. The presentation of work by Niamh O'Malley was kindly supported by Culture Ireland. Nadia Belerique’s summer residency and production of new work is kindly supported by Canada Council for the Arts.

Entrance throughout 2018 is free. Events as part of our active public programme are posted on the Calendar section of our website. For more information on any of our projects or activities please get in touch by emailing office@grazerkunstverein.org