Autumn 2022 exhibition programme

This autumn the Salzburger Kunstverein presents exhibitions by Bani Abidi and Jonas Geise, as well as ongoing projects by Omer Fast and Megan Rooney, and a project to mark the 100 year centenary of James Joyce’s Ulysses. 

Bani Abidi: The Song (Great Hall)
In many European streets, one is exposed to countless languages. Conversations between people, street market vendors selling wares, TV sounds from curtained rooms, music playing in cars, or phone conversations of people on the move. When one listens closely, one might actually hear a voice from another time zone, muffled and incomprehensible but another addition to the aural-urban landscape. For those engaged in these acoustic exchanges, these sounds are not just textural, but essential, a life line. They are immersive clouds of sorts, the magic that helps make ‘foreign’ familiar.

Abidi’s most recent film, The Song, premiers in Salzburg and is commissioned by the Salzburger Kunstverein in partnership with Film & Video Umbrella, Contemporary Art Society, and John Hansard Gallery. Its supported by Arts Council England and presented by Contemporary Art Society to Gallery Oldham.

The film draws on her interest in sound and migration, and on what it means to be acoustically displaced. An old man who is a recent arrival to Europe, confronts the silence of his allotted Neubau apartment, finding his own way to settle down. Alongside is the sound installation ‘Memorial to Lost Words’ (2016), with voices of Indian soldiers from the Great War.

Jonas Geise (Kabinett)
Jonas Geise presents a series of new abstract paintings and drawings. Using a technique of applying thick paint in different stages, his paintings question notions of space, which is then seemingly torn apart and re-assembled into fresh versions of chaos. His exhibited drawings are composed with broken shards of glass, conjuring up notions of anger, failure and a good sense of self-humour. Altogether his expressive compositions often partly resemble architectural or sculptural forms, which could contain various possibilities and impossibilities, utopias and dystopias. The physicality of the materials he uses, his contrast of colour with darkness, and the structured yet expressive process he employs all express a meditation on the artist’s surrounding reality. Jonas Geise (*1980, Salzburg) studied at the University of Art and Design in Linz between 2003  and 2013. He lives and works in Salzburg.

Yearlong projects
In our Red Room an audio version of James Joyce’s Ulysses is presented in full to mark the Centenary of the book’s 1922 publishing. In the Ring Gallery we present Omer Fast’s VR-film The Invisible Hand, available for viewing anytime. Also an astonishing mural by Megan Rooney fills the corridors and ceilings of the Ring Gallery.

Digital catalogue
This platform is an online version of an exhibition catalogue, with exhibition texts and documentary images accompanied by online videos of the exhibition, some of the artwork, and interviews with the curators and artists. Available here

About 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.

Stay connected
Please check our website for regular updates on our programme.
For further information please contact: Michaela Lederer
T +43 (0) 662 842294-15  / lederer [​at​] salzburger-kunstverein.at