Spring 2020 exhibition programme

Storytelling across personal and grander narratives will be a key focus of our spring exhibitions. We present variations on an irreverent self that resists authority and hegemony, and counters narratives of genius. Exhibitions also confront fading democracy as evident globally in counterpoint with failing memory—both historical memory and individual memory. In correlation, the topic of migration emerges, combined with ideas of writing and rewriting history. And finally, a ghost has appeared in our hallway, and is not expected to leave any time soon.

Exhibitions: February 7 to April 19, 2020, opening on Friday, February 7, 8pm

Main Gallery

Gernot Wieland
Gernot Wieland makes films, drawings, performances and playful installations that examine conditions of fact and fiction, often existing between dreamscapes, storytelling, reality and neuroses of recollection. Gernot Wieland’s work unravels the stasis of the past. Deciphering the manners by which we dissect our individual histories, the artist questions how the wistful reveries of nostalgia both affix and displace the textual layers of our imagined selves. Memory in Wieland’s films is not something passively inert; instead it vibrates with agency and life, surging into the present with a combined dose of humour and sincerity. Gernot Wieland was 2019 winner of the EMAF Media Art Award of the German Film Critics.

Ring Gallery

Omer Fast (continues until 2025)
In 2019, we commissioned Omer Fast to make his film, Der oylem iz a goylem, based on a Jewish fairytale. From 2020 we will present a long-term installation of Fast’s The Invisible Hand, based on the same fairytale, where a ghost brings a curse upon a family. Shot in Guangzhou, China on a 3D VR camera, and premiered at the Guangdong Times Museum, the work was shut down due to the reasoning that there are no more ghosts in China since the founding of the People’s Republic.

Kabinett Gallery

The Museum of Broadcasting and Loneliness by Declan Clarke includes a new film, Saturn and Beyond, combined with objects the artist has salvaged from a museum of broadcasting, which his late father established out of his passion for the history of communications and Ireland’s minor but important role in modernization.

Exhibition: May 8 to July 12, 2020, opening Friday, May 8, 8pm

Khalil Rabah
Main Gallery & Kabinett
Palestinian artist Khalil Rabah is best known for rewriting and inventing forms of history. His art practice aims to create an alternative vision that challenges public perception and expectations. With a long history of producing artwork that also explores topics of migration, Khalil Rabah will produce a major new installation in the Main Gallery, along with a presentation of video work in the Kabinett. A weekend-long a new music festival inspired by his work will also be organized by our partners, Austrian New Music Ensemble (oenm).

Special thanks to City and Land Salzburg Funding, Federal Chancellery Funding, Culture Ireland, The Irish Embassy in Vienna, Trumer Bier, Blaue Gans Art Hotel, SpallArt Collection Salzburg, and all patrons and members.

About the Salzburger Kunstverein
The Salzburger Kunstverein is a leading organisation for producing and exhibiting international and Austrian contemporary art. Founded in 1844, the Salzburger Kunstverein owns and is housed in the historic, notoriously-red Künstlerhaus building, which includes exhibition areas (in total 500 m2) and 22 studios for artists and art initiatives. Current trends in contemporary international art are presented here, where artists can meet and be met, and where art, art theory and cultural policies are analysed and discussed. The Director of the Salzburger Kunstverein is Séamus Kealy.

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Further information: Michaela Lederer, T +43 (0) 662 842294 15  / lederer [​at​] salzburger-kunstverein.at