Program 2019

Kunsthaus Bregenz is a site of prototypes that focuses primarily on the present, staging distinctive exhibitions that would not be feasible anywhere else. In 2019 the issue of the face was the most important criterion. The face is the image in the mirror, the epitome of the subject in every selfie. But the face is also the physiognomy providing the model for avatars. Within databases, the face becomes an image for machine recognition. This is why KUB’s program for 2019 starts with an exhibition by Ed Atkins.

KUB 2019.01
Ed Atkins
January 19-March 31, 2019

Ed Atkins is an artist who makes videos, writes and draws, developing a complex and deeply figured discourse around definition, wherein the impossibilities for sufficient representations of the physical, specifically corporeal, world—from computer generated imagery to bathetic poetry—are hysterically rehearsed. Atkins’ works often centres on an unidentified figure, a kind of surrogate for the artist, who is animated by Atkins’ own performance. The figure is to be found in situations of everyday despair, anxiety, frustration and pitch comedy.

Atkins’ works are steeped in sentimentality. Sadness, beauty and transformation occur with the speed of paranoiac thought. Striking images, familiar musical phrases or poignant pleas are cut, ruined or denied at the last minute. Traces of profound affection and interrupted empathy linger. It is such sensation that makes Atkins’ works so striking; an artificial realism and romantic lushness that models feelings often inexpressible in real life. Atkins will present a slice of new and recent works for Bregenz, including Old Food, a body of works that expands with each iteration. Here, Atkins transports us to a pseudo-historic world of peasantry, bucolic landscapes and eternal ruin. Characters weep continuously, their lives devoid of dramatic redemption; a looping piano motif haunts the space; crowds of people plummet while credits roll; and inedible, impossible sandwiches assemble and collapse in lurid advertisements. Produced exclusively using CGI (computer generated imagery), everything in Atkins’ exhibition is understood as fake—nostalgia, history, progress, authentic life, identity.

Opening on Friday, January 18, 2019, 7pm
 

Further exhibitions 2019

KUB 2019.02
Miriam Cahn
DAS GENAUE HINSCHAUEN
April 13-June 30, 2019

Miriam Cahn’s paintings are as oppressive as they are engaging. In pastels or charcoal, she frequently depicts figures that fill the frame within empty, barely defined surroundings. Loneliness, sexuality, love, violence, and destruction are her subject matter. Cahn is influenced by the performance art of the 1970s, feminist art, and the peace movement. Her figures call for mute identification, sympathy, and a heightened awareness. Sometimes the mountainous landscape of the Upper Engadine is depicted by rugged horizons, overpowering and sublime, and yet, their lines still seem to allude to the human.

Opening on Friday, April 12, 2019, 7pm

KUB 2019.03
Thomas Schütte
July 13-October 6, 2019

The German creator of sculptures and drawings, born in Oldenburg, is one of the most important contemporary artists. His most important group of works are the sculptures, which largely originate from small, palm-sized wax or clay models, which are then cast in monumental dimensions—up to six meters high—in bronze or steel. In Bregenz, a dragon that snorts water vapor is being exhibited for the first time, a sculpture that is still in the stage of being cast. For Thomas Schütte’s summer exhibition at Kunsthaus Bregenz, his works are not only being presented in the Kunsthaus itself but also in various public spaces in Bregenz.

Opening on Friday, July 12, 2019, 7pm