Saadane Afif
Jacques Andre
Mari Angeletti
Thomas Bayrle
Barbara Bloom
Herbert Brandl
Andrea Buttner
Hans-Peter Feldmann
Camille Henrot
Michaela Maria Langenstein
Pierre Leguillon
Hanne Lippard
Maurizio Nannucci
G.T. Pellizzi
Max Renkel
Michael Riedel
Hubert Scheibl
Yann Serandour
John Stezaker
Johannes Wohnseifer
Luca Lo Pinto
Nicolaus Schafhausen
Anne-Claire Schmitz
Collecting as Portrait and Methodology. Photographs, books and knick-knacks: artists collect a variety of objects. While they generate personal collections regardless of their artistic practice, they also create collections based on artistic methods.
Curators:
Luca Lo Pinto, Nicolaus Schafhausen, Anne-Claire Schmitz
Artists:
Saâdane Afif, Jacques André, Marie Angeletti, Thomas Bayrle, Barbara Bloom, Herbert Brandl, Andrea Büttner, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Camille Henrot, Michaela Maria Langenstein, Pierre Leguillon, Hanne Lippard, Maurizio Nannucci, G.T. Pellizzi, Max Renkel, Michael Riedel, Hubert Scheibl, Yann Sérandour, John Stezaker, Johannes Wohnseifer.
Artists are collectors, attracted to unusual material forms and immaterial phenomena. Benjamin Buchloh once credited Marcel Duchamp as the initial "artist-as-collector" referring to his ready-mades. Through the collection and conservation of objects, Duchamp was concerned with the relation between the material source and artistic work.
The exhibition Individual Stories at Kunsthalle Wien presents a selection of 20 contemporary artists who agreed to show the personal items they have collected, recorded or documented, or the artworks which have evolved from the process of collecting.
The act of collecting as a personalized and individual engagement is a means to learn more about the persona and, in the specific case of an artist's collection, an approach toward their artistic practice. Addressing different formal, aesthetic and conceptual concerns, the collections vary and lead a path to understanding the respective artists' works. While some collections exist as independent from artistic practice, others constitute an artistic methodology or could be regarded as works of art themselves. The items shown at Kunsthalle Wien each have a personal relation to their collector. Thus, the exhibition aims at simultaneously reading collections as portraits of the artists and their fields of interests. It offers a new view on contemporary artistic practice through the act and method of collecting.
On occasions driven by curiosity, at other times by systematic search for something, the various collections presented in the exhibition offer dramatically different approaches to the broad field of collecting as such. The emphasis on individual portraits allows for alternative access to what can be a very intimate part of artistic work, thus facilitating fresh perspective on the artists' oeuvre.
Kunsthalle Wien will publish an accompanying publication with photographs by Marie Angeletti, who will document the collections in an intimate and personal fashion, together with texts written by each of the artists outlining why she or he began to collect (published by Sternberg Press).
Photo: Stephan Wyckoff: G. T. Pellizzi, Disjecta Membra Populi I, 2013; Disjecta Membra Archeologica, 2013, Courtesy the artist and Galerie Loevenbruck, Paris
Head of Press and Communications
Katharina Murschetz +43-1-52189-1221 katharina.murschetz@kunsthallewien.at
Assistant Stefanie Obermeir +43-1-52189-1224 presse@kunsthallewien.at
Opening: Thursday, June 25, 2015, 2015, 7 pm
Kunsthalle Wien Karlsplatz
Treitlstraße 2 1040 Vienna, Austria
Hours
Daily from 10 am – 7 pm
Thursdays 10 am – 9 pm