Are the banal objects of our consumerist world to be equated with the opulently arrayed fruits, blooms and other vanitas motifs familiar to us from the painterly still lifes of Old Masters? What is it that underpins our 400-year fascination with the genre? And why are contemporary artists rediscovering the still life for themselves in the medium of photography at this very precise moment in time? What do still lifes have to say to us today about our habits and our very own existence?
Still Life
Obstinacy of things
13.09.2018–17.02.2019
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Impressions
13.09.2018–17.02.2019
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Obstinacy of things
13.09.2018–17.02.2019
With a selection of international and Austrian artists ranging from Jan Groover to Christopher Williams, Leo Kandl and Harun Farocki, the large theme-based photo graphy exhibition highlights the historical development strands that have led to today’s radical re-examination of the genre as a new field of experimentation for artistic expression. Above all, the exhibition featuresa younger generation of artists who are reflecting our very own ‘present’ in their photographs. They do so by precisely perceiving and meticulously examining the world of objects that surrounds us, with all its peculiarities, beauty, and ugliness. While some have chosen aggressively to combine highend consumer products with garbage and trash, others focus on things utterly over looked: worlds of objects that act as the traces of our everyday world with an often idiosyncratic beauty – which is precisely why they
reward a closer examination. As we slow down the pace with which we contemplate them, these new still lifes counterbalance the glut of digital images that submerge our everyday lives, creating spaces in which our quotidian objects encounter things both novel and unfamiliar.
List of artists
Ketuta Alexi-Meskhishvili (GE), Dirk Braeckman (BE), Moyra Davey (CAN), Tacita Dean (GB), Gerald Domenig (AT), Harun Farocki (DE), Hans-Peter Feldmann (DE), Manuel Gorkiewicz (AT), Jan Groover (US), Matthias Herrmann (DE), David Hockney (GB), Leo Kandl (AT), Annette Kelm (DE), Elad Lassry (IL), Zoe Leonard (US), Laura Letinsky (CA), Sharon Lockhart (US), Anja Manfredi (AT), Barbara Probst (DE), Ugo Rondinone (CH), Lucie Stahl (DE), Andrzej Steinbach (DE/PL), Ingeborg Strobl (AT), James Welling (US), Christopher Williams (US), Andrea Witzmann (AT)
Curator
Maren Lübbke-Tidow