Vienna, a super contemporary city: the Art Week appointments
In the month of November, Vienna offers one more reason to visit it, with the appointment of the Art Week: from 18 to 25, a rich program enlivened the art places of the city, presenting the art week in its eighteenth edition, now a long-standing tradition. An opportunity to experience art up close, with one eye on the past and one on the future. With this year’s theme, “Challenging Orders,” in Vienna Art Week pre-established orders are questioned, reflecting on the most current issues of our reality. From economics to aesthetics, from society to politics, to culture, art reveals its potential in representing our times.
Vienna: modern and contemporary
Cradle of the Viennese Secession, the Austrian capital at the end of the 19th century was the scene of great changes in the artistic sphere, destined to make history. Since then, the creative drive has never stopped in the city which, today, hosts one of the largest areas dedicated to art in the world. We are talking about the Museums Quartier, on the border with the historic centre, inaugurated in 2001, among the points of interest to visit during the Vienna Art Week. Here is the Leopoldine Museumwith the most important collection of Egon Schiele in the world, and the muokwhere you step forward in time with 20th and 21st century art from the permanent collection.
Almost ready for the inauguration, at the end of the Art Week, the temporary exhibition at the mumok “mixed with others before even starting”. An exhibition that proposes an investigation into those models of thought which, within contemporary visual culture, manage to reconcile different entities. Still in the MuseumsQuartier is the Q21 which houses the Artists-in-Residence program, where it is possible to learn about the work of artists from different parts of the world, currently in residence: Neil Mendoza, Coloah (Dmytro Avksentiev), Alexandra Kononchenko, Anna Cove, Juraj Mydla, TJ Cuthand, Rebecca Chesney & Lubaina Himid, Anatoly Belov.
House of challenging orders
An office building converted into an exhibition venue is instead the headquarters of the House of Challenging Orders. Here, the co-founder and director of the Vienna Art Week, Robert Punkenhofer, brings the project of an exhibition in which the pre-established orders, rules and canons of our society are questioned by art and critical thinking. How we understand social ties and hierarchical scales, the predominance and redemption of genres, power and money, the function of bodies and roles. These are the sub-themes of the exhibition in the House of Challenging Orders, where there are Viennese and non-Viennese artists, young and historic, iconic and lesser-known works.
Thus, in the House of Challenging Orders, the works of Pipilotti Rest, The man yes, Oliver Resler, Manu Luksch And Queen José Galindo, among others. Painting, sculpture, photography, video and performance: an artistic proposal that explores the media at 360 degrees, proposing the search for artists to be discovered, such as Christian Peschek, Mai-Thurs Perret, Mirabella Paydamwoyo, Monica C. Lo Cascio. In this way, Robert Punkenhofer, joined by Julia Hartmannexplores, with its curatorship, the questions of our time that overturn the most ordinary visions.
All roads lead to Art Week
Open studios, galleries, museums, works in progress and residences: in every area of the city there is an open door for Vienna Art Week. From the most classic places to the most recent and less conventional ones, art in Vienna spreads in a capillary way in the urban fabric. The work of Jean-Fréderic Schnyder is exposed to Secessionwhere famous masterpieces of Gustav Klimt, in a personal exhibition that presents an interesting pictorial research of almost forty years. Walking through the streets of Vienna during the Art Week, a contemporary side is revealed enlivened by different realities, between historic and more modern buildings. Come there Galerie Lair and the Krinzinger Gallery or Das Weisse Hausan interdisciplinary collaborative platform that variously involves different artists such as Lavinia Lanner, William de Haan, Ryts Monet, Hyeji Nam. All roads in Vienna lead to Art Week in the third week of November, to discover a very rich and lively art scene, where modernity and contemporaneity embrace each other in a multifaceted proposal.