COLLECTION
24 May through 26 August 2007
Generali Foundation
Wiedner Hauptstrasse 15
1040 Vienna, Austria
phone: 43 1 504 98 80-24
e-mail: foundation [at] generali.at
Opening hours: Tuesday to Sunday 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.,
Thursday to 8 p.m.
Works by Robert Barry, VALIE EXPORT, Andrea Fraser, Dan Graham, Klub Zwei, Edward Krasi_ski, David Lamelas, Dorit Margreiter, Gustav Metzger, Walter Pichler, Mathias Poledna, Florian Pumhösl, Allan Sekula, Heimo Zobernig, and many other artists in the video program.
The Generali Foundation stands for discourse-oriented, critical, and conceptual art from the 1960s to today. After four comprehensive and highly successful presentations abroad, the Generali Foundation is devoting an exhibition to its international collection of contemporary art at its Vienna home for the first time since 2003.
Some of it is familiar, Some of it is unknown, and There is always more of it being revealedthese quotes from Robert Barrys slide projection It can change (1970/71) serve as a motto of sorts for this exhibition from the collection. In addition to a number of well-known key works such as VALIE EXPORTs TAP and TOUCH CINEMA (1968), primarily new acquisitions will be on viewsome of them shown in Vienna for the first time.
Florian Pumhösls film installation Programm (Program), for example, made in 2006 for the Bienal de Sao Paulo, in which the artist engages with the Modernista movement in Brazil. Heimo Zobernigs contribution, produced especially for the collection, has also never before been shown in Austria; in its functionality, expanding the traditional concept of sculpture, it is comparable to Dan Grahams New Design for Showing Videos (1995). On the other hand, the reconstruction of Walter Pichlers Pneumatic Space (Prototype 5), which was destroyed in 1966, permits the viewer to encounter an example of 1960s utopian architecture.
In addition, this exhibition from the collection shows sequential and cinematographic works by Dorit Margreiter, Allan Sekula, and Mathias Poledna; and pieces that foreground performative aspects, such as a group of works by Edward Krasinski. Works with explicitly socio-critical content, such as those by Andrea Fraser, Gustav Metzger and Klub Zwei complement the show.
Many positions among the more than 2000 works held by the Generali Foundation could be presented. The works selected for the present show offer an insight into this privately financed collection of art, which has acquired an outstanding international reputation due to its clear profile and sustained focus on specific art issues. The Generali Foundation, in contrast to many public institutions, consistently explores its focused program rather than attempting to cover the entire spectrum of contemporary tendencies. Connections and correlations on different levels emerge between individual works and between various artistic practices. In this show, for instance, aspects of temporality or of the criticalness of individual works and groups of works as well as different aspects of performativity can be emphasized. Or the works presented can be interrogated with respect to their media-specific analyses of their artistic means. Manifold interconnections between the individual positions are proposed for the viewer to trace. In Barrys words, It has variety.
Curator, Artistic and Managing Director: Sabine Breitwieser
Assistant Curator, Exhibition Coordination: Bettina Spörr
