Mathias Poledna
to represent Austria
at the 55th Venice Biennale
Office of the Austrian Pavilion
La Biennale di Venezia 2013
Schleifmühlgasse 1, 1040 Vienna
The artist Mathias Poledna will represent Austria at the Venice Biennale in 2013. His selection was announced by Commissioner Jasper Sharp at a press conference in Vienna. Poledna will present a solo exhibition of new work in the Austrian Pavilion.
Born in Vienna in 1965, Mathias Poledna has lived and worked in Los Angeles since 2000. His work examines the interconnections between art and entertainment, modernity in architecture and design, the language of film, cinema, and the process of image-making in our culture. Often informed by extensive research, his projects of recent years have taken the form of minimal and highly evocative film installations that suggest a complex tension between their visceral attraction and concepts circulating around them. Poledna’s work is represented in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; MUMOK, Vienna; and the Generali Foundation, Vienna; among others.
To accompany the exhibition in the Austrian Pavilion, a landmark publication examining Austria’s participation at the Venice Biennale from 1895 to today, is currently being prepared. This scholarly, 400-page book will present, for the first time, a comprehensive overview of each individual exhibition, with the help of previously unpublished photographs, plans, and correspondence drawn from public and private archives in several different countries. The book will be launched in May 2013.
For media enquiries please contact:
Klara M. Piza: press [at] labiennalevenezia.at / T +43 699 10 83 74 00.
Mathias Poledna, artist
Solo exhibitions include: Secession, Vienna (2013); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2012); Galerie Buchholz, Berlin (2012); Raven Row, London (with Florian Pumhösl, 2011); Portikus, Frankfurt am Main (2010); Galerie Meyer Kainer, Vienna (2010); New Museum, New York (2009); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2007); Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam (2006); Richard Telles Fine Art (2005); and MUMOK, Vienna (2003). Recent group exhibitions include: the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam; the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Haus der Kunst, Munich; Frankfurter Kunstverein; Warsaw Museum of Modern Art; Musée Rodin, Paris; Secession, Vienna. Poledna also participated in the Yokohama Triennial (2008); the Whitney Biennial, New York (2006); the Liverpool Biennial, Tate Liverpool (2004); the 3. Berlin Biennale (2004); and Manifesta 1, Rotterdam (1996).
Jasper Sharp, commissioner
Jasper Sharp (b. 1975) is a British art historian and curator. He worked from 1999–2005 at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, and has lived in Vienna since 2006. He is Curator for Modern and Contemporary Art at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, where he is currently preparing exhibitions of the work of Joseph Cornell, Ed Ruscha, and Lucian Freud. He is an advisor to the Outset Contemporary Art Fund and curator of the talks programme for the inaugural Frieze Masters in London in October 2012.
