Autumn/Winter 2019/20

Autumn Season

Riccardo Giacconi
Options
September 19–November 22, 2019

Options is an exhibition and performance project by Riccardo Giacconi for steirischer herbst ’19 – Grand Hotel Abyss and Grazer Kunstverein’s Autumn Season. The exhibition stems from research into archive and propaganda materials from the period between 1939 and 1943 in South Tyrol, when the German-speaking population were faced with the decision of either emigrating to Nazi Austria (and other Third Reich territories) or remaining in Fascist Italy, as a result of Hitler and Mussolini’s so-called "Option Agreement."

Giacconi studied posters, leaflets, newspaper articles and political pamphlets from the era, conducting extensive research in-situ, to produce a series of artworks that performatively question ideas of citizenship, borders, identity, language communities, Heimat, nativism, minority, and migration. The Option Agreement period and its aftermath may serve as a paradigm of how such ideas are constructed, manipulated, instrumentalized and fictionalized. In this sense, Options is not configured as a historical investigation, but as a constellation between two moments in time—as a commentary on today’s European political discourse, through the lens of a past event. 

Winter Season

Fiona Hallinan
I remember oranges, you remember dust
December 6, 2019

As part of her ongoing hospitality project Fink’s, Fiona Hallinan presents I remember oranges, you remember dust, a cooking workshop in three parts that explores how to make dust, wash hands, knead ash, remove excess, preserve and persevere. For Hallinan, collectively preparing and sharing food acts as an engaged process through which to present research and exchange ideas. Located in the reception area of the Grazer Kunstverein, Fink’s is a threshold, a holding space for loitering, gathering, eating and thinking, as well as a library of leftovers from past events, with each season archived in the form of edible dust.

Triple Candie
Grazer Kunstverein, 2017–2020
December 6, 2019

In 2017 Triple Candie (Shelly Bancroft and Peter Nesbett) began a multi-layered research project, investigating the work and methodologies of American artist Michael Asher (1943–2012). This performative project attempted to resurrect the lost experiential potentialities of Asher’s situational artworks, drawing on a depth of research to create new interventions in a new context, that of the institutional framework of the Grazer Kunstverein. The resulting propositions, speculations, interventions, and installations are documented in a new publication, Triple Candie: Grazer Kunstverein, 2017–2020. This catalogue is published in collaboration with Phileas – A fund for Contemporary Art, and will be launched on December 6, 2019 as part of Grazer Kunstverein’s Winter Season. 

Richard Kriesche
VERNISSAGE
February 12–February 16, 2020

VERNISSAGE is a week-long project conceived by Richard Kriesche especially for the Grazer Kunstverein. Open only in the evenings, the project aims to reconsider the precise location of art in the contemporary context, thinking about the individual, subjective experience in contrast with the quantification of culture as data. Since the 1990s Kriesche’s work has explored the interdependencies of art, society, technology and economy, working in critical and creative tension to problematise systems and reveal glitches. For Winter 2019/20, Kriesche creates a situation in which visitors to the Kunstverein are invited to search for, and locate meaning, against a dizzying backdrop of bureaucracy, protocol and radical hospitality.

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. Options was co-commissioned and co-produced by Grazer Kunstverein and steirischer herbst ’19. The Directorate-General for Contemporary Art and Architecture and Urban Peripheries of the Italian Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities supports the participation of Riccardo Giacconi at the steirischer herbst festival ’19 in the context of the Italian Council 2019 Program. 

Entrance throughout 2019/20 is free. For more information on any of our projects or activities please get in touch by emailing office@grazerkunstverein.org