Ingrid Wiener, Martin Roth

Curated by Katrin Bucher Trantow, Michaela Leutzendorff Pakesch

Two artists, two generations. Two first major retrospectives that complement each other in their conceptual approaches. One weaves what she sees, draws and writes what she dreams, takes photos from the plane and is famous for her cuisine. The other, a generation younger, starts with painting, expands into space, creates landscapes, and devotes himself to conceptual and minimal art from the perspective of everything alive. Carpets overgrown with grass, snails in a Donald Judd, ducks mapping the studio. What unites both is the consistently inclusive and eternally inquiring gaze from a distance.

The exhibition at the Kunsthaus Graz brings together works by Ingrid Wiener and Martin Roth giving rise to a world of wonderous networks. Ingrid Wieners dream drawings, her goblins and films, often created in exchange with others and her immediate environment, are juxtaposed with the installations, films and two-dimensional works of Martin Roth, who has dedicated his art to creating and nurturing the living itself. Roth, originally from Styria and living in New York, sadly passed away much too early in 2019, just when his work had become widely internationally recognized. Ingrid Wiener, on the other hand, is a well-known figure in the Austrian art scene. She participated in actions of the Wiener Gruppe, worked on goblins and films with Dieter Roth, VALIE EXPORT and Oswald Wiener and only settled down in Austria about ten years ago after working in Berlin, Düsseldorf and Canada. 

The show creates an artistic dialogue as symbiosis of life and things, in which time and space is interwoven. It depicts a world that seems reminiscent of Haraway’s famous Chthulucene: man is fleeting here—well placed not at the center but at the edges of these ever-changing worlds: observing, enabling and learning.

Ingrid Wiener (born 1942 Vienna as Ingrid Schuppan) has had solo exhibitions, among others at Museum Hartberg, Hartberg (2020), at Galerie Barbara Wien, Berlin (2019), at Helga Maria Klosterfelde, Berlin (2019), at Jagla-Ausstellungsraum, Köln (2018), at Kunsthaus Mürz, Mürzzuschlag (2012), at Charim Galerie, Wien (2008), at Neue Galerie Graz am Landesmuseum Joanneum, Graz (2006), at Edizioni Morra, Neapel (2001) and participated in numerous group exhibitions in Austria, Italy, France, Germany, China, Canada and Switzerland. Together with Dieter Roth, she has had exhibitions at MAC, Marseille, Secession, Vienna, Schaulager, Basel, Museum Ludwig, Cologne, and MOMA, New York, among others.

Martin Roth (1977 Graz–2019 New York) has had exhibitions at Vohn Gallery, New York (2014), at Naturkundemuseum, Graz (2014), at Reinisch Contemporary, Graz (2015), at Hessel Museum, New York (2015), at The Artist’s Institute, New York (2014), among others. At the Austrian Cultural Forum New York (ACFNY) In May 2017 I cultivated a piece of land in Midtown Manhattan nurtured by tweets (2017), at Yours, Mine & Ours Gallery, New York, In November 2017 I collected a plant from the garden of a mass shooter (2018), at Strongroom, Newburgh, NY, the exhibition From 2017-2021 Martin Roth transformed a ruin into a garden for a plant concert (2021). At Kunst Haus Wien In October 2019 I listened to animals imitating humans (2019–20), which was reactivated in the exhibition what will be. Towards a plurality of Futures at Kunsthaus Graz (2021).