John Smith: Being John Smith
Atelier Bow-Wow: Suturing Together
September 12–November 16, 2025
June Crespo: Danzante
June Crespo’s sculptural assemblages, which the artist understands as communicating vessels, resonate within our bodies. Most of the works in the exhibition Danzante take their formal vocabulary from the iris and the strelitzia. Yet the artist is not concerned with representing these plants, they rather serve as starting points for a deeper engagement with materiality. Hereby, the artist produces unusual associations between architectural space and body, between flesh and stone, which she conceives of not as distinct but as intertwined entities.
June Crespo was born in Pamplona, Spain, in 1982. She lives in Bilbao, Spain.
Programmed by the board of Secession. Curated by Bettina Spörr.
June Crespo’s exhibition Danzante has been developed and co-produced in close collaboration by the Vienna Secession, the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, and MO.CO. Montpellier Contemporain, where it will subsequently be on display.
The exhibition was made possible by kind support from the Henry Moore Foundation and Acción Cultural Española.
John Smith: Being John Smith
John Smith’s films unfold at the intersection of conceptual art, structural film, and documentary, revolving around his own life and immediate surroundings. In his exhibition at the Secession, he weaves a complex network of personal iconography across three films, interlaced with photographs and objects. In the new film Being John Smith, which also gives the exhibition its title, image, voice, and text are intertwined in an autobiographical meditation on nothing less than the meaning of art and existence itself.
John Smith was born in Walthamstow, East London, UK, in 1952. He lives in London, UK.
Programmed by the board of the Secession. Curated by Jeanette Pacher.
Save the date: John Smith Special at the Austrian Film Museum
Saturday, September 13, 2025, 6pm and 8:30pm; the artist will be present.
Atelier Bow-Wow: Suturing Together
For Atelier Bow-Wow, architecture is not a static thing but a living part of a broader network in which objects, people, neighbouring buildings, weather conditions, and site-specific dynamics actively shape the design process. In their exhibition, a sight-specific intervention as well as a historical overview of more than twenty Atelier Bow-Wow projects is presented through photographs, architectural drawings, and sketches that showcase the studio’s key approaches and methodologies.
Atelier Bow-Wow is an architecture studio from Tokyo, Japan, founded in 1992.
Exhibition design: Momoyo Kaijima, Yoshiharu Tsukamoto, and Yoichi Tamai (Atelier Bow-Wow)
Collaborators: Tazuru Harada, Penelope Gregoire (The chair of Architectural Behaviorology, ETH Zurich,
Switzerland)
Programmed by the board of the Secession. Curated by Haris Giannouras & Damian Lentini.
Generous support provided by the Obayashi Foundation.
Save the date: Thatching Workshop with Momoyo Kaijima and thatcher Jacobus van Hoorne
Saturday, September 13, 2025, 11am
Publications
The exhibitions are accompanied by publications. The digital publications are available for free here.
Press contact: presse@secession.at / press materials
