11.5-13.6.2010, 20:30

Austria la vista, baby

Artists:
Andrea Ressi, Bernd Oppl, Deutschbauer & Spring, Eva Hradil, Heike Schäfer, Ines Doujak, Liddy Scheffknecht, OneState Embassy, Peter Weibel, Thomas Feuerstein.

Curator:
Christian Rupp


The exhibition “Austria la vista, baby” follows up to the exhibition “Flavors of Austria” that was presented in May 2009 at TAF (the art foundation). Curator Christian Rupp focuses on critical approaches towards issues of social and political awareness and a variety of established contemporary Austrian artists, ranging from Documenta participants to art students, expresses them through works of painting, photography, installation, performance and object art. The participating artists are: Andrea Ressi, Bernd Oppl, Deutschbauer & Spring, Eva Hradil, Heike Schäfer, Ines Doujak, Liddy Scheffknecht, OneState Embassy, Peter Weibel, Thomas Feuerstein. The exhibition is organised by TAF and cheapart, under the aegis of the Austrian Embassy in Athens and the support of the Austrian Ministry of Culture and highlights the close relationship between Athens and Vienna.

Andrea Ressi’s series “Hybrid Urbanities - Fragments of the Global City” analyzes urban development and structures in today’s Global Cities, as well as the contradictions and disturbing encounters with and within newly implanted first world-structures into third world countries.

In his work "In den kleinen weißen Zellen" (Inside the Small White Cells), Bernd Oppl presents an ironic play of exhibition space simulation, oriented towards realizing exhibitions and large-scale projects in a reduced form.

Deutschbauer & Spring are a duo well known for their performative interventions in public space. In their work "Sound of Migration" (produced by the institution "apap VI, szene Salzburg") they sarcastically inject the issue of migration and the hardships of immigrants into the glamour of social and cultural events.

Eva Hradil asked a variety of men to pose nude for her and presents the resulting paintings next to photographs of their clothes. Her work often touches gender-topics and subverting preconceptions of contemporary art in the disguise of traditionalism, with the aim to irritate.

Heike Schäfer’s pieces feature innovative ways to work with different materials that often create hybrids between object and picture. In this show she presents works that quote martial motives, such as nuclear explosions and targets form the shooting range.

The photography of Ines Doujak results from a project she did in Thessaloniki that was revolving around the history of the people of Pontus and the immense suffering and death-tolls that the “population-exchange” between Greece and Turkey caused about 100 years ago.

In her photography series Liddy Scheffknecht placed objects that were designed for urban spaces outside into “nature”. The two pictures on display show surveillance equipment in places where they are not yet common.

OneState lies between Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt; between the Mediterranean sea and the Jordan valley. Ambassadors Osama Zatar and Tal Adler have appointed themselves as first Ambassadors of OneState in June 2009, in the lack of any other diplomatic services at that time. OneState Embassy in Vienna became the first Embassy to represent OneState globally.

Peter Weibel’s video-installation from 1973 develops a surprising ironic flavor today, while we are surrounded by increasingly omnipresent surveillance equipment in public space.

Thomas Feuerstein covers a whole wall of the exhibition space with specifically adapted and created posters. His arrangements touch the precarious relation and the interplay between individual and society.