Open House

OK Center for Contemporary Art, Linz

The exhibition focuses on the status of art and the public sphere today. Special attention is devoted to the rapid transformations of urban space, which have had a lasting influence on critical art practice in recent years. Artists and collectives were invited to take part in the exhibition, who pose the concept of the urban public sphere, the production of visual images in public space, or the possibilities of artistic interventions for discussion with their own forms of expression, thus dealing with relevant themes going beyond the field of art. The exhibition becomes a magnetic field of confrontations and forms of communication at the nexus of visual art and social practice, leading into the field of action of the city

comunicato stampa

Art and the Public Sphere

Curators: Thomas Edlinger, Stella Rollig, Roland Schoeny

Olaf Arndt & Rob Moonen - Big Hope - Michael Blum - Candice Breitz - Harun Farocki - Andrea Geyer - Gregor Graf â€“ LIGNA - Mark Lombardi - Marko Lulic - Oliver Ressler - Andrea van der Straeten - Silke Wagner

OPEN HOUSE focuses on the status of art and the public sphere today. Special attention is devoted to the rapid transformations of urban space, which have had a lasting influence on critical art practice in recent years.

Starting from the city of Linz and its situation of wide-scale rebuilding as a model case, art projects are presented that reflect on urban space as a stage for global economicization and as a laboratory for alternative business models, and as a location in the charged field in between an official understanding of history and subversive appropriation.

Urban spaces that were formerly defined as public and used that way, have gradually been transformed into a CinecittÃ of modernist and postmodern architecture, the motor of which is driven by the interests of big business and spectacle. Parallel to continuously optimized navigation systems of illuminated advertisements and signposts, consumer statistics and diagrams of movement become increasingly significant, ultimately converging in new forms of surveillance technology and the conception of increasingly complex security measures.

Artists and collectives were invited to take part in the exhibition, who pose the concept of the urban public sphere, the production of visual images in public space, or the possibilities of artistic interventions for discussion with their own forms of expression, thus dealing with relevant themes going beyond the field of art.
The O.K becomes a magnetic field of confrontations and forms of communication at the nexus of visual art and social practice, leading into the field of action of the city.

With the event OPEN WEEKEND (26/27 March), the exhibition gains an additional dynamic: an open space initiating discussions, lectures and performative projects. The central theme is the question of the possibilities of alternative modes of living and working in a late capitalist society.
with: b_books, Eva Illouz, GlÃ¼ckliche Arbeitslose, Malmoe, Terre Thaemlitz

Image: Free Kunst, Candice Breitz

O.K Center for Contemporary Art, Dametzstr. 30, Linz Austria
Press information: Maria Falkinger, t:+43.732.784178-203

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permanent link

OK Center for Contemporary Art

IN ARCHIVIO [11]

Shilpa Gupta
dal 24/11/2010 al 29/1/2011