Kunsthalle Vienna

Front view of the Kunsthalle in the Museumsquartier (2002)

The Kunsthalle Wien is the City of Vienna's exhibition center for international contemporary art and discourse with the MuseumsQuartier and Karlsplatz locations . It exhibits different forms of international contemporary art and develops new formats for exhibiting and communicating for this purpose. The Kunsthalle Wien does not have its own collection, but instead, with its changing individual and themed exhibitions, is dedicated to the presentation of art and the reflection of art and culture.

history

The former building of the Kunsthalle Wien on Karlsplatz in August 1993, with advertising space for the exhibition "The Broken Mirror"

Originally designed by Adolf Krischanitz as a temporary building in the shape of a container for Karlsplatz , it was opened there in spring 1992 and was at the center of heated public discussions even before it opened. The "huge dispute" ( Kurier , March 21, 1992) about the windowless, initially simply blue and yellow container, which dominated the cityscape in a central location, was rated as a "culture war" with "populist verbal attacks" (Kurier, March 25, 1992) The Kronen Zeitung , for example, claimed that the new art gallery would bring “the people's soul to a boil”. There were political solidarity initiatives with the architect, but there were also criticisms from colleagues like Roland Rainer . "Cabaret-ready word duels" shaped a related meeting of the Vienna City Council (Kurier, March 28, 1992)

In May 2001 the Kunsthalle Wien moved into the new main building in the MuseumsQuartier , a new building in the former “Ovalen Hof”, including the former winter riding arena of the court stables . The two halls of the Museum Quarter together have an area of 1647 m². The provisional container on Karlsplatz, with its pedestrian passage now inoperable, was dismantled. It was replaced by a glazed exhibition space that served the Kunsthalle Wien as a project space until 2012 and has been an equivalent exhibition and event space since 2013.

Kunsthalle Wien Museumsquartier

The glass cube at the Karlsplatz site (2015)

The first considerations for a museum quarter in the center of Vienna were made in the 1980s before a competition was announced, which the architects "Ortner & Ortner" ( Laurids Ortner and Manfred Ortner ) finally won in 1990. The new building of the main building of the Kunsthalle Wien took place behind the listed facade of the former winter riding arena in the center of the Museum Quarter - between the Leopold Museum and mumok . The historical structure was supplemented or connected to a brick building that houses two exhibition halls.

Kunsthalle Wien Karlsplatz

As the second location of the Kunsthalle Wien, the glass cube transports art to one of the neuralgic intersections of the city, Karlsplatz.

The daily newspaper Der Standard describes the cube as follows:

"An inexpensive architecture as a medium, a test tube for artistic interventions, an idea acceleration machine for a scene that will never really feel at home in marble halls and stucco halls."

Corporate Design

The figure of the eagle is used in a variety of ways to mark the Kunsthalle Wien. The renunciation of a fixation on a certain graphic form should be synonymous with its versatility.

In April 2013 the Kunsthalle Wien presented its new visual appearance. The concept, designed by the Belgian graphic designer and artist Boy Vereecken, combines two design elements associated with the city: the factual, geometric grid of the Wiener Werkstätte and the figure of the eagle as the heraldic animal of Vienna . The design dispenses with a fixed trademark and is synonymous with the versatility of the Kunsthalle Wien.

dramaturgy

One focus of the Kunsthalle Wien is discourse. Special emphasis is placed on new communication formats and the supporting program. Talks, lectures, workshops and special tours accompanying the exhibitions are coordinated by a dramaturgical department. The “Dramaturgy” department is a novelty in an institution of contemporary art and networks the different exhibition formats and audience segments in a curatorial and mediating way.

Exhibitions

Every year the Kunsthalle Wien organizes several thematic group exhibitions and individual shows, festivals, conferences and exhibits art in public spaces.

Exhibition area of the Kunsthalle Wien with the exhibition I'm Isa Genzken, The Only Female Fool , in 2014

1998: Nan Goldin - I'll Be Your Mirror

1999: Andy Warhol . A factory

2000: Shirin Neshat

2002: Tele (Visions)

2002: Yayoi Kusama

2003: Ugo Rondinone

2003: Anri Sala

2003: Marcel Broodthaers

2005/2006: Louise Bourgeois

2006: Steven Cohen

2006: Summer of Love

2006/2007: Raymond Pettibon

2007: Nathalie Djurberg

2008: Matthew Barney - Drawing Restraint

2008: Steve McQueen

2008: Derek Jarman - Brutal Beauty

2008/2009: Western Motel: Edward Hopper and Contemporary Art

2009: The Porn Identity

2009: Thomas Ruff

2010: 1989. End of History or Beginning of the Future?

2010: Keith Haring : 1978-1982
2010: Street and Studio
2010/2011: Power Up: Female Pop Art
2011: Space. About a dream
2011: Le Surrealisme, c'est moi - Homage to Salvador Dalí
2012: The Circus as a Parallel Universe
2012: Urs Fischer
2012: The Art of William S. Burroughs : Cut – ups, Cut – ins, Cut – outs
2012/2013: Daniel Knorr : Explosion (art in public space)
2013: WWTBD - What Would Thomas Bernhard Do (Festival)
2013/2014: Salon of Fear
2014: Jos de Gruyter & Harald Thys: The miracle of life
2014: Pierre Bismuth : The Grass is Always Greener on the Other Side - New Vindobona (art in public space)
2014: Silke Otto-Knapp & Carl Fredrik Hill: Questions of Travel
2014: Attention Economy
2014: I'm Isa Genzken : The Only Female Fool
2014: The Brancusi Effect
2014: New Ways of Doing Nothing
2014/2015: Kidnappers Foil
2014/2015: * Tony Conrad : Two Degrees of Separation
2015: Leander Schönweger: The Fog Disperses , Kunsthalle Wien Prize 2014
2015: Blue Times
2015: Ken Lum : Coming Soon (art in public space)
2015: The Future of Memory. An Exhibition on the Infinity of the Present Time
2015: Pierre Bismuth : The Curator, the Lawyer and the Psychoanalyst
2015: Curatorial Ethics (Conference)

2015: Destination Vienna
2015: Individual Stories. Collecting as Portrait and Methodology
2015: Function Follows Vision - Vision Follows Reality
2015/2016: Political Populism
2015/2016: Prize of the Kunsthalle
2016: One, No One and One Hundred Thousand
2016: The Promise of Total Automation
2016: L'Exposition Imaginaire
2016: Andrea Büttner : Beggars and iPhones
2016: concrete
2016: Ron Terada: See other Side of Sign - Concrete Language
2016: Nathalie Du Pasquier: Big Objects not always silent
2017: Marcel Odenbach : Proof of nothing
2017: More than just words: (On the poetic)
2017: How To Live Together
2017/2018: Publishing as Toolbox for the 21st Century: 1989–2017
2017/2018: Florian Hecker
2019/2020: Time Is Thirsty , curator Luca Lo Pinto

Others

Since 1992, over a million people have visited the exhibitions at the Kunsthalle Wien.
In 2002 the Italian art magazine ARTE named the Kunsthalle Wien one of the six best exhibition venues in Europe.
In March 2005, the courtyard facade of the art gallery with the flag installation Kanak Attack. The third Turkish siege imposed by the artist Feridun Zaimoğlu .