The Curated Object

Exhibitions Vienna. TOUR DU MONDE. Bicycle Stories. MAK Center. The Curated Object

Mecadural Pélissier, ca. 1950 Long-distance touring bicycle by Mercier, France (detail) © EMBACHER-COLLECTION® / Photo: Bernhard Angerer

Skoot, 2001 Suitcase bike made by Skoot International LTD, Great Britain Design: Vincent & Vaughan Fallon © EMBACHER-COLLECTION® / Photo: Bernhard Angerer

TOUR DU MONDE. Bicycle Stories

June 14, 2013–October 6, 2013

 

With its presentation of over 40 iconic bicycles from the 20th and 21st centuries, TOUR DU MONDE. Bicycle Stories tells of the quality and diversity of the design-related thought that has gone into this classic mode of transportation. Amidst rising awareness of sustainability issues and oft-heated debates on mobility in metropolitan areas, this time-tested mode of individual transportation is currently experiencing a renaissance and becoming more and more the trendy symbol of an urban lifestyle. Examples from the renowned collection of Viennese architect Michael Embacher will guide visitors on a journey through the history of the bicycle as a cult object; at the same time, the bicycle’s successively transformed technology and shaping allow one to trace the recent history of innovation and design in general.

The EMBACHER-COLLECTION®, established in 2003, includes over 210 standard production models, one-of-a-kind creations, and curiosities ranging from children’s bikes to athletic and leisure bikes, utility bikes and folding models. These masterpieces of design and engineering, which are normally housed in a Viennese attic and not accessible to the public, serve Michael Embacher both as sources of inspiration and as objects of daily use. Embacher has now developed an installation for these vehicles’ public presentation in the MAK Exhibition Hall.

The rarities to be shown in TOUR DU MONDE include one-of-a-kind models by the Moulton Bicycle Company as well as a Diagonale by French maker René Herse, the “Rolls Royce” of bicycle manufacturers, and also curiosities like the all-plastic bike Wilhelmina Plast by Sweden’s Itera and the all-wheel-drive Subaru 2WD Dual Power, developed by the Austrians Günter Kappacher and Paul Pollanka. High-performance bicycles that have written athletic history, such as the Textima Time Trial used by the national team of the former GDR, the Schauff Aero and the carbon-monocoque Bianchi C-4 Pista, are further highlights of this showing.

The bicycle has long since gone beyond being just a clever mode of transportation to become a fashion and lifestyle statement. While the motivating factors behind Karl Drais’s original invention of the Laufmaschine [walking machine] were rising oat prices and the increasing cost of horse-drawn vehicles, today it is the rising cost of liquid fuels and the questionable nature of using automobiles for local trips, as well as the joy of healthy exercise, that are moving more and more city dwellers to switch to more environmentally conscious modes of transportation.

Embacher shares his enthusiasm for this “intelligent product” with numerous colleagues. Architects and designers such as Ron Arad, Richard Sapper, Marc Newson, and James Dyson make out a hero in the recently deceased British engineer and bicycle builder Alex Moulton, who also developed the rubber suspension system used by the legendary original Morris Mini. In the same way that the revolutionary pieces of steel-tube furniture by Bauhaus artists Mart Stam, Marcel Breuer, and Mies van der Rohe were once realized with components made by Italian bicycle manufacturer A. L. Colombo, the use of design principles and individual technical solutions from bicycle technology in a transdisciplinary manner remains a viable option today. No wonder, then, that enthusiasm for bicycling runs especially high among creative professionals; more than a few of them move about town on custom or vintage models of their own.

A central aspect of TOUR DU MONDE is the narrative conveying the stories that dwell within the objects themselves. iPad stations featuring the award-winning app Cyclopedia, developed by Heuristic Media in collaboration with Thames & Hudson, will be available to complement the collection catalogue. This app contains 126 bicycles of the EMBACHER-COLLECTION® and allows chronological and technical cross-referencing between the objects and their stories.

 Cycling makes for a better quality of life, asserts the musician, all-round artist, and bicycle activist David Byrne. In his book Bicycle Diaries, he describes the bicycle as a “machine of perception” that permits sensory experience and a direct relationship with one’s environment and with society. Byrne’s cycling experiences on concert tours in nine metropolises, including New York, Berlin, Istanbul, and Manila, accompany TOUR DU MONDE as a subtext of sorts, though the chapter on Vienna has yet to be written.

 TOUR DU MONDE. Bicycle Stories, an exhibition of the MAK with support from the City of Vienna, will open as the MAK’s contribution to Velo-City 2013: The Sound of Cycling – Urban Cycling Cultures (velo-city2013.com, 11–14 June 3013), the world’s largest bicycle conference, held as part of Vienna Bicycle Week (10–16 June 2013) and as the highlight of city’s Bicycle Year (radjahr2013.at). Around the same time, the Portland Art Museum in the United States, and a bit later the Holon Design Museum in Israel, will also be showing selections from the EMBACHER-COLLECTION®.

 This exhibition will be accompanied by an extensive supporting program that includes workshops, talks, and special offers for kids and families. During the exhibition’s run, selected entries to the departure idea competition Cycling Affairs – Smart Ideas for Cycling in the City will also be on exhibit (cycling.departure.at).

For more information please visit: The MAK Center

posted by Joanne Molina

Exhibitions Vienna. THINGS. Plain and Simple. MAK. The Curated Object

 

Peter Skubic, Ring, Vienna 1974

© MAK/Georg Mayer

 

Bench seat, design: Donald Judd; execution: Celedonio Mediano, Marfa, Texas

© MAK/Georg Mayer

 

THINGS. Plain and Simple.

13 June – 30 September 2012 

In an unusual take on the subject, the MAK exhibition THINGS. plain & simple explores the ideal of simplicity as a significant and formative element of style history across epochs and cultures. The broadly conceived exhibition from the museum’s collection, which will be on view at the MAK Vienna from 13 June puts the principle of simplicity in different perspectives, discussing it not only as an aesthetic premise, but also in the context of socio­political and socio­logical phenomena.

 

THINGS. plain & simple combines three parallel theme exhibitions in a notable curatorial experiment: curated by three MAK collection curators, the exhibition traces the aesthetics of simplicity in both European and Asian art history. The exhibits on view impressively evidence how reductionism informed style over centuries in almost periodical waves.

 

While simplicity in furniture design is mainly surveyed as a Modernist issue, the exhibition segment about plainness in everyday objects and utensils focuses on the polarity between functionality in use and moderation in luxury. Finally, an excursion into Asian art history explores simplicity in relation to a specific way of living and view of the world, but also to European tendencies.

 

Plain Furniture

Functionalism and purism, modesty and moderation, poverty and luxury: surveying plain furniture design from the Biedermeier epoch to the early 20th century and from the interwar years (1918-1939) up to the present day, the exhibition segment about Plain Furniture covers the full range of associations evoked by simplicity. Exemplary of this stylistic diversity is a selection of table situations in the show—living-room and kitchen tables, but also desks and working tables plus chairs and stools from the early 19th century onward: it was the time when simple functionalism first gained relevance as an aesthetic quality in the design of objects of everyday use.

 

With the classical attributes that are normally associated with simplicity, that is, reduced shapes, no ornamentation, and strict functionality, the bentwood furniture from the Thonet Brothers, for example, prevailed against the opulent taste of the Historicist period. However, simplicity gained significance through­out all classes of the population. So, around 1900, the growing share of furniture that was designed plain and simple—taking account of the cramped housing conditions and meager financial means of the working classes—was also much appreciated by the better-off population.

 

Today, the paradox of the richness of simplicity applies more than ever. The essentialist aesthetics of American Minimal Art, one of the most important art movements in the second half of the 20th century, had a formative influence on the style of contemporary architecture and design. In a time when each and everything seems available simplicity is the ultimate (self-)adornment.

 

Plain Useful / Luxuriously Simple

In the exhibition segment named Plain Useful / Luxuriously Simple, exhibits of ceramics, precious or base metals, glass, and textiles illustrate the develop­ment of simplicity in everyday utensils from the 15th century until today. The dichotomy of sparingness and luxury that is inherent in the idea of simplicity becomes particularly evident in objects of everyday use. With clear shapes and sparse ornamentation, utility objects were informed from the 15th cen­tury by their intended use and the prevailing standard of crafts­manship. Already back then, however, simplicity as an aesthetic ideal imbued the design of luxurious and prestigious tableware made of exquisite materials.

 

With unsurpassed simpleness of formal expression, tableware and toilet sets of plain undecorated silver, as were made in Vienna in the first half of the 19th century, still have a very special effect today. A similar aesthetic can be found in products of the Viennese Porcelain Manufactory of the same period. Both types of products may also have inspired the designers of the Wiener Werkstätte. Simple grid objects made of sheet iron or silver to designs by Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Moser are as unique examples of the plain and simple form as are cutlery, cases, or tea and coffee services.

 

Moreover, this segment of the exhibition features jewelry from the 1980s and ’90s: characteristically reduced design combined with perfect craftsman­ship. With exponents like Peter Skubic, Manfred Nisslmüller, Gert Mosettig, and Helfried Kodré based here,Vienna has a special position in this field.

 

Simplicity: The East-Asian Way

In the countries of Eastern Asia, the turn toward simplicity can be first observed inChina in the 11th century, instigated by scholar-officials and occurring in parallel to the transition from military state to civil administration.

Drawing on the flourishing Chan Buddhism as well as on ancient vernacular philosophical traditions, the new ruling class defined their own, mostly socio-politically motivated aesthetics. Reduction was seen as an expression of exemplary modesty and also began to inform the design of everyday utility objects. The Song culture had a strong influence on China’s neighbor states, which developed it further independently, relating it to their own traditions.

 

Although Japan—with a feudal military caste remaining in power well into the 19th century—saw a development contrary to that of China, the concept of “modesty” also found a—depoliticized—form of expression there. Not literally translatable, the dual notion of “wabi-sabi” refers to a sophisticated sense of the beauty of simplicity.

 

Europe had been fascinated with the decorative and formal richness of Asian cultures for a long time, and the creative drive inherent in the newly imported plain wares fromChina, Japan, and Korea again set an aesthetic example in Europe. Showing select objects from the MAK collection, this part of the exhibition keeps track of Eastern Asian design principles throughout the centuries.

Exhibitions Vienna. MADE4YOU. Design for Change. MAK. The Curated Object

 

Design Studio Gavari, GAVARI SEMI-ACOUSTIC VIOLIN, 2007
© Maurizio Maier / Gavari Violin

 

Conrad Kroencke, Jelly Web, 2007
© Conrad Kroencke / Main device

 

Alexander Wurnig, Nadine von Seelen, Harald Tremmel, Dorian, 2010
© Alexander Wurnig / user interface layout

 

Dominik Premauer, Andrea Hanzl, Deniz Örs, David Pfluegl, Train Interior, 2010
© Dominik Premauer / Train Interior Children

MADE4YOU. Design for Change

June 6 – 7 October 2012

Affording a comprehensive survey of design innovations from World-Class corporations such as Amazon, Apple, Audi, Bene, Mercedes Benz, Nike, Philips, Siemens, or Zumtobel as well as seminal studies by a young generation of designers, MADE4YOU. Design for Change is more than a design experience of superlatives: the show that was developed in close collaboration with Hartmut Esslinger, one of today’s most influential designers, emphasizes the significance of design as a crucial factor in fundamental social and technological transformations in the 21st century, creating awareness for its role as a driving force of positive change.

Reaching out beyond discourses of stylistic education or formal aesthetics, the MAK in MADE4YOU sets out to examine—almost 150 years after its foundation—the significance of design as an applied art and driver of the economy; an examination that will importantly inform the museum’s identity and future educational work. Against the background of the omnipresence of design in everyday life, meanwhile a matter of course, the show will illustrate the social, ecological, and cultural implications of design for a broad segment of the public.

“The goal of this exhibition is to demonstrate and communicate DESIGN as a strategic and holistic way of finding and creating sustainable and successful solutions and experiences, and to convey at the same time that DESIGN as a cross-disciplinary profession requires a new level of public and private commitment, from education to politics and the economy. We also want to encourage people—first and foremost creative talents—to become a part of this already global movement: DESIGN FOR CHANGE,” says Hartmut Esslinger to summarize the point of the project.

Featuring about 30 exemplary projects from global design agencies and corporations, intelligent and future-oriented developments will be outlined for various fields, including leisure, work, health, mobility, household, entertain- ment, and digital convergence. Background information from the working process and statements from designers collaborating on the project, marketing people, managing directors, workers, users and consumers will elucidate what makes successful design today. The central segment of the exhibition, however, will be dedicated to the young generation and new design methods. A ‘Future Laboratory’ will be presenting the broad range of promising new approaches, among them 30 design studies by graduates from Esslinger’s Master Class ID2 at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, where he was Professor of Convergent Industrial Design from 2006 to 2011.

With Hartmut Esslinger, the MAK could win one of the most eminent designers and design thinkers worldwide as a collaborator for MADE4YOU. Esslinger, founder and long-time principal of the frog design and strategy agency with headquarters in San Francisco and offices on all continents, has worked for over 40 years for and with some of the most renowned companies, such as Sony, Apple, Louis Vuitton, SAP, Siemens, and Lufthansa. After the end of his term as Professor of Industrial Design in Vienna, Esslinger accepted a call from Shanghai in 2001 to become a DeTao Master of Strategic Design at Fudan University’s Shanghai Institute of Visual Art.

As a quasi-finale to the exhibition, a discursive Design Summit and a Design Nite will be held with all participant companies and agencies for the Vienna Design Week (28 Sep – 7 Oct 2012) under a cooperation between the MAK and departure, the creative agency of the City of Vienna.

For more information please visit: MAK.at

 

 

Exhibitions Vienna. FURNITURE OF ALL KINDS. Design Drawings from the Danhauser Furniture Factory. MAK. The Curated Object

Joseph Ulrich Danhauser Workshop
Design Daybed, 1814–1829
© MAK

 

Joseph Ulrich Danhauser Workshop
Design Cue Stand, 1814–1829
© MAK

 

 

Josef Franz Danhauser
Design Dressing Table No. 41, 1831–1842
© MAK

 

Joseph Ulrich Danhauser Workshop
Design Centerpiece No. 2, 1814–1829
© MAK

 

... FURNITURE OF ALL KINDS. Design Drawings from the Danhauser Furniture Factory

April 18 – 1 July 2012

A singular survey of the wealth and beauty of Biedermeier forms will be offered from 18 April 2012 at the MAK Works on Paper Room in an exhibition entitled ... FURNITURE OF ALL KINDS. Design Drawings from the Danhauser Furniture Factory. In 1931, the MAK purchased the entire estate of drawings from the Danhauser Furniture Factory and now possesses the largest holdings of furniture drawings from the Viennese Biedermeier epoch, comprising more than 2,500 sketches, drawings, and catalogues. A selection of 350 of the most original drawings will now be presented to the public for the first time ever.

Like no other name, Danhauser stands for the flourishing of the Viennese “meuble”. Established 1804 by Joseph Ulrich Danhauser (14 Mar 1780– 6 Jan 1829) and taken over after his death by his son Josef Franz Danhauser (18 Aug 1805–4 May 1845), a successful painter and graphic artist, the factory was the first furniture-maker in Vienna to significantly inform Austrian residential interiors, bourgeois and aristocratic, in the first half of the 19th century.

Originally a manufacturer of gilded, silver-plated and bronzed sculptural wares, Joseph Danhauser received the “Imperial Royal Provincial Manufac- turing Privilege” for the production of lamps and furniture decoration elements in 1808. A few years later, he also received the privilege for the production of “furniture of all kinds,” so that from 1814 Danhauser could exclusively expand his business to all areas of interior design, including furnishings.

His wide clientele was by no means limited to the Viennese high aristocracy. The middle classes and customers from all over the Habsburg monarchy and the neighboring countries also had furniture made by Danhauser. Moreover, the Danhauser estate includes designs for two residences of Archduke Charles of Austria, Duke of Teschen, today’s Albertina and Weilburg Palace near Baden, Lower Austria, and for the private chambers of Archduchess Sophie at Laxenburg Palace.With their unsurpassed aesthetics and abundance of shapes, the Danhauser furniture designs are still astounding today. In respect to knowledge about the history of Viennese furniture, they are simply invaluable, as they afford a sur- vey of more than twenty years of furniture history and a major epoch of Vien- nese arts and crafts which would otherwise be difficult to document. They also anticipate to some extent the idea of the total work of art (Gesamtkunstwerk) which eventually manifested itself in European arts-and-crafts movements around the turn to the 20th century only.

Stylistically, the designs epitomize the creative brilliance of two generations of artists. The mostly monochrome, precisely contoured pen-and-ink drawings of Danhauser senior are all in the tradition of academic arts-and-crafts drawings. Shaded with delicate washes of grey, they are distinguished by great plasticity. In contrast to this are the watercolor designs made by Danhauser junior, which provided artisanship with a fresh creative impulse. His designs led to a series of interiors, which artfully staged furnishing products in painterly, sometimes open or unfinished prospects of ideated spaces.

These interiors were used by Josef Franz Danhauser in the 1830s for an unequalled and seminal advertising campaign. Steel-engraved interior designs were enclosed as supplements to the Wiener Zeitschrift fu␣r Kunst, Literatur, Theater und Mode [Viennese Journal of Art, Literature, Theater and Fashion]. He thus was the first to successfully present entire furniture ensembles to a broad public in an aesthetically appealing manner, developing an optimum marketing tool for his product range.

The exhibition ... FURNITURE OF ALL KINDS. Design Drawings from the Danhauser Furniture Factory presents the drawings, as in the original catalogue, in 32 categories, and with the original titles. The drawings exhibited show, for example, not only chairs but also field chairs, riding chairs, children’s chairs, or commode chairs, as well as related types of seating such as taborets or ottomans, and not only tables, but special writing tables or desks, washing tables or washstands, tea tables, sofa tables, dressing tables, or extendible or folding tables.

For the exhibition opening, the researched and digitalized holdings of drawings will be published online in full (sammlungen.MAK.at), which may be relevant not only for scholars and art dealers, but also for furniture connoisseurs and lovers. Unfortunately, there are only few original pieces of furniture extant from the manufactory. Some of the most important and most valuable items are on display in the MAK Permanent Exhibition and the MAK branch Geymüllerschlössel.

For more information please visit: MAK.at

 

Exhibitions Vienna. Envisioning Buildings: Reflecting Architecture in Contemporary Art Photography. MAK Exhibition Hall. The Curated Object

 
MAK Exhibition View, 2011

Envisioning Buildings: Reflecting Architecture in Contemporary Art Photography

MAK Exhibition Hall, 7.12.2011–22.4.2012

© Wolfgang Woessner/MAK

 

MAK Exhibition View, 2011

Envisioning Buildings: Reflecting Architecture in Contemporary Art Photography

MAK Exhibition Hall, 7.12.2011–22.4.2012

© Wolfgang Woessner/MAK

 

Envisioning Buildings: Reflecting Architecture in Contemporary Art Photography

December 7, 2011 – 22 April 22 2012

"Envisioning Buildings: Reflecting Architecture in Contemporary Art Photography" surveys the work of several international contemporary artists whose art work engages with aspects of architecture and building. The exhibition focuses on contemporary art photography as artists produce views of architecture not present in ‘architectural photography’ and denied everyday perception—and effectively provide a backstage glimpse behind architecture’s façades. It also hopes to gauge the influence of contemporary art upon architecture and the ways that each of the disciplines speak to each other.

 

According to MAK Director Christoph Thun-Hohenstein, “Barely any domain affects our lives in such an enduring way as do architecture, urbanity and urban planning, as we live within a built-environment and a built-reality. For the sake of living, architecture must be more than urban planning-meets-sculpture; it must possess a quotidian functionality. When contemporary art turns its gaze to the built-environment, categorical architectural imperatives are suspended and supplanted by artistic visions and alternative readings of those buildings are engaged.”

 

Principally, Envisioning Buildings reviews major conceptual, theoretical, and visual concerns of photography as a specific contemporary art medium. The exhibition presents the work of several of the most influential artists working with camera-based art making, who have changed discourses about the production and reception of photography since in recent decades. The exhibition is structured into eight thematic chapters—Restoration, Reanimation, Dwelling, Utopian Visions, Deconstruction, Refraction, Critique and Systems Analysis—that reflect concerns present in the artist’s work as a whole. Both the artists and the exhibition itself focus on iconic 20th and 21st century buildings, among them works by leading exponents of Modernism such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Erich Mendelsohn, Berthold Lubetkin and the Tecton Group, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, Philip Johnson and Ernst Plischke as well as by contemporary architects like Frank O. Gehry, Herzog & de Meuron, Kenzo Tange, and Peter Zumthor.

 

Distributed among several of the thematic areas, Envisioning Buildings presents, as a ninth chapter, artists’ works that explore Rudolph M. Schindler’s architecture; as a reflection of the museum’s stewardship, through the MAK Center of Art and Architecture in Los Angeles, of the legacy of the Austrian-American architect one of the founders of modernist building in the United States. The Schindler program also includes the MAK Schindler Artists and Architects-in-Residence Program with its home base at the Mackey Apartments.

Exhibition curator Simon Rees draws attention to the fact that artists are often given privileged access to buildings that are otherwise not open to the public; and their works can reveal socio-economic processes or even counteract the effects of time. According to Rees, “Time is a major actor upon architecture, as its depredations (remember that buildings suffer the elements) alter the appearance and functionality of a building, so that the building visited might be a ghost of the picture that exists in a viewer’s imagination—formed from photographs taken of the building in the afterglow of completion”.

Envisioning Buildings brings together works by artists and photographers from all over the world, several of them from the “Düsseldorf School of Photography” and gives an international survey of architecture seen through the lens of art photography.

The participating artists are: Sabine Bitter & Helmut Weber (AT), Mladen Bizumić (NZ/AT), José Davila (MX), Werner Feiersinger (AT), Andreas Fogarasi (AT/HU), Cyprien Gaillard (FR), Andreas Gursky (DE), Gavin Hipkins (NZ), Candida Höfer (DE), Geoff Kleem (AU), Joachim Koester (DK), Luisa Lambri (IT/ US), Thomas Locher (DE), Marko Lulić (AT), Dorit Margreiter (AT), John Massey (CA), Maix Mayer (DE), Sarah Morris (UK/US), Warren Neidich (US/DE), Sandra Peters (DE), Pia Rönicke (DK), Thomas Ruff (DE), Allan Sekula (US), Thomas Struth (DE), Hiroshi Sugimoto (JP/US), James Welling (US), Jane & Louise Wilson (UK), and Tobias Zielony (DE).

Reaching out across disciplines, Envisioning Buildings is also an expression of the MAK’s central concern of addressing and connecting in an interdisciplinary approach art, architecture, and design as well as interface areas between them, exploring if, and how, they can or need to be transformed. Christoph Thun-Hohenstein explicates: “Envisioning Buildings is understood as a foundation for this new enduring dialogue between art and architectural culture. The exhibition presents a significant array of art works and artist’s thinking about crucial questions about architecture. We are also arranging a process for architects and the motivated public to respond to in text and video that will be conveyed to the artists (for a reply). And so a conversational cycle will be produced.”

This discourse-oriented approach is manifested in an extensive program of supporting events for visitors of all ages. One focus in this is on discussions between architects and the participating artists. In parallel, an interactive dialogue platform (for detail information go MAK.at/eb) will provide opportunities for visitors and invited experts to debate the significance of the exhibition in respect to contemporary art and architecture. Their currently updated contributions will be made visible and audible as part of the presentation and collected as archival material for future exhibitions.

Envisioning Buildings also marks the start of the first project of the new MAK LEARNING LAB, a MAK initiative that explores potentials of museum education as an applied art of its own. Until the end of 2012, the MAK museum education and management teams will be working out together with section.a and trafo.K experimental approaches in three pilot projects as well as a criteria catalogue for future educational work at the museum.

The Envisioning Buildings exhibition launches a prototype information desk/display, which provides visitors with additional textual information on the eight thematic chapters. Moreover, it will offer picture postcards of art-works in the exhibition with questions on the back that suggest divergent views of the artists’ contributions. Visitors may fill these in and leave them on a message board as ‘postcards’ to the curator.

On the occasion of the exhibition, the MAK is launching, in cooperation with Volltext Verlag, Vienna, a bilingual (German/English) half-yearly periodical named MAK/zine. The first issue is dedicated to the Envisioning Buildings exhibition and contains a number of essays on the relationship of art, architecture, and photography.

For more information please visit: MAK

 

Exhibitions Vienna. Brilliant Times: European Art Nouveau Jewellery. The Leopold Museum. The Curated Object

Kirchgaessner & Kraft, Pforzheim, belt buckle, ca. 1903-1905, Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt

 

Hans Christiansen, Wiesbaden, J. Friedmanns' Nachfolger, D. & M. Löwenthal, Frankfurt/Main (production), belt buckle, 1901, Hessisches Landesmuseum, Darmstadt

 

Josef Hoffmann, Vienna, Company of J. Souval, Vienna (production), for the Wiener Werkstätte, Square brooch, 1910-11, On loan from a private collection

 

BRILLIANT TIMES: European Art Nouveau Jewellery

February 2, 2011- June 6, 2011 

In early 2011, the Leopold Museum will be mounting Austria's most comprehensive exhibition to date on the topic of Art Nouveau jewellery. This exhibition is to present exquisite objects from the Hessian State Museum in Darmstadt as well as from private collections. The holdings of the Hessian State Museum are based on the Arts-and-Crafts collection of the Dutch court jeweller Karel A. Citroen (*1922). Citroen began collecting in 1952, at a point in time when it was not at all fashionable to collect artisan craftwork from the Art Nouveau. By 1959, the Amsterdam-based jeweller had succeeded in bringing together several hundred objects from all over Europe, with the main focus being on jewellery.

The 220 jewellery objects from Citroen’s collection number among the highlights of the Hessian State Museum’s holdings. Works on display will also include those of the renowned Parisian jewellers, goldsmiths and enamellers René Lalique (1860–1945) and Georges Fouquet (1862–1957), as well as creations by André-Fernand Thesmar (1843–1912) and Lucien Gaillard (1861–1933). At the close of the 19th century, René Lalique touched off a revolution in the field of jewellery design. He designed sumptuous jewellery for the fin-de-siècle world, and his customers included important turn-of-the-century personalities. These works’ richness of colours and forms, coupled with the preciousness of the employed materials, seems virtually inexhaustible. Lalique was also an inspiration for Viennese jewellery-makers around the turn of the century; the Viennese, however, then proceeded to develop their work in a completely different direction.

The peculiarity of Viennese Jugendstil art and the differences between it and the Art Nouveau style elsewhere in Europe are made clear with objects on loan from private collections, some of which have never or only seldom been shown publicly. In the collection of the Hessian State Museum, Viennese Jugendstil jewellery is represented by only a few pieces. While the Secessionists Joseph Maria Olbrich (1867–1908) and Kolo Moser (1868–1918) at first worked in the so-called “floral Jugendstil” style, the period that had begun by 1900 at the latest saw a the emergence of an underlying architectural theme which was oriented in particular toward the connection of vertical and horizontal structures.

1903 saw the establishment of the production community known as the “Wiener Werkstätte”. Its designers, above all Kolo Moser, Josef Hoffmann (1870–1956) and Bertold Löffler (1874–1960), held the view that jewellery as an art form should demonstrate not the wealth, but rather the individuality of its wearer. They preferred semi-precious stones and silver to diamonds and gold, for they believed that the value of their jewellery pieces was derived above all from their extraordinary design and quality of workmanship, and less from their actual material value. Germany is represented by Hans Christiansen (1866–1945) and by examples of jewellery from the jewellery-making centres of Hanau and Pforzheim. Jewellery from Denmark is also present in the form of works by Georg Arthur Jensen (1866–1935).

Furthermore, the exhibition includes Dutch jewellery by Bert Nienhuis (1873–1960) and Jan Eisenlöffel (1876–1957), as well as pieces by the legendary Russian goldsmith Carl Peter Fabergé (1846–1920). Belgian Art Nouveau is represented by works of the jewellery producer and designer Philippe Wolfers (1858–1929). Jewellery from Great Britain by William Hair Haseler (1864–1949) will also be shown, as well as pieces of jewellery and works in gold by the British architects and designers Henry Wilson (1864–1934) and Charles Robert Ashbee (1863–1942), and further objects produced by Liberty & Co.

For more information please visit: The Leopold Museum 

Exhibitions Vienna. Contemporary Jewelry from Austria. MAK. The Curated Object

Petra Zimmermann, Kette mit Anhänger, 2009, Polymetylmethacrylat, Acrylglas, Blattgold, Silber geschwärzt, Anhänger 165 x 55 x 17 mm © Foto: Galerie im Traklhaus

Agnes Czifra, Lavinias Hose, 2010, Bearbeitung der Seidenhose mit Hand und Nähmaschine, Länge: ca. 47 cm, © Foto: Galerie im Traklhaus

Beatrix Kaufmann, "hook & loop", 2009 Wurfobjekt, gewebtes Polyamid, Länge: 16 cm © Foto: Galerie im Traklhaus

 

 

Contemporary Jewelry from Austria

November 24–27 February 27, 2011

 

The “Eligius” award for body jewelry and jewelry objects, named for the patron saint of goldsmiths, is conferred by the Province of Salzburg every three years and has a value of EUR 5,000. A scholarship (worth EUR 2,500) is also awarded. Beginning on 24 November, the MAK Metal Study Collection will host an exhibition showing works by the 20 jewelry artists who were nominated for the final round of the award competition. This year’s renowned Eligius Jewelry Award was won by Petra Zimmermann, with the scholarship going to Agnes Czifra. The jury, consisting of graphic designer Gunter Damisch, artist Susanne Hammer (winner of the first Eligius Jewelry Award in 2005) and Elisabeth Schmuttermeier, MAK Curator of Metal and the Wiener Werkstätte Archive, explains its decision as follows: “This jewelry artist brings the world of fashion into her work and questions the concept of beauty as it relates to design and jewelry. The intensive use of forms and materials, including large amounts of gold leaf, makes for opulent, many-layered jewelry objects.”

Every two years, the MAK Metal Study Collection mounts exhibitions featuring contemporary Austrian jewelry designers. This year, as well, the exhibited works embody a representative cross-section of contemporary Austrian jewelry art, thanks in particular to the MAK’s assumption of an exhibition originally shown at Salzburg’s Gallerie im Traklhaus. Additionally, several of the artists—including Sonja Bischur, Andrea MAXA Halmschlager, Gabriele Kutschera, Margareta Niel, Kurt Rudolf, Ina Seidl and Petra Zimmermann— are already represented in the collection of the MAK. Also on exhibit will be works by Elisabeth Altenburg, Andrea Auer, Susanne Blin, Lioba-Angela Buttinger, Agnes Czifra, Petr Dvorak, Ursula Guttmann, Beatrix Kaufmann, Doris Maninger, Martina Mühlfellner, Ulrich Reithofer, Melanie Sinnhofer and Claudia Steiner.

The Eligius Jewelry Award, Austria’s only award in the field of jewelry, is conferred by the Province of Salzburg. Apart from its singularity, it is also important in the sense that it recognizes jewelry as an art form in its own right. The award’s purpose is first and foremost to strengthen the position of the younger generation of jewelry artists. At this year’s competition, birth-years between 1960 and 1970 were most heavily represented. Award winner Petra Zimmermann, born in Graz in 1975, lives and works in Vienna. She studied jewelry and metal at the Academy of Art and Design in Bratislava from 1996 to 1998, as well as sculpting from 1997 to 2002 at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, where she finished with a diploma.

Solo exhibitions (selected): 2010 History Repeating II (Ornamentum Gallery, Hudson, NY), History Repeating (Galerie Biró, Munich); 2009 New Works (Caroline van Hoek Contemporary Art Jewelry, Brussels). Agnes Czifra, born in Salzburg in 1989, studies and works in Vienna. As a jewelry artist, she is an autodidact. Her works have been included in the collection of V&V-Galerie since January of 2010.

For more information please visit: www.MAK.at

 

Exhibitions Vienna. Minimal. Art and Furniture from the MAK Collection. MAK, Vienna. The Curated Object

MAK Table, 2009 Design: Joao Silva 200 x 80 cm Photo © MAK/Georg Mayer, 2010

Wall Étagère (in the “Brettl”-style), ca. 1898 Design: Josef Hoffmann Softwood, previously stained greenH 220 cm, W 37 cm, D 29 cm Photo © MAK/Georg Mayer, 2010

Object: Red and Blue Chair, ca. 1920 Design: Gerrit Rietveld Realization: G. A. v. d. Groenekan Beachwood, painted H 85.5 cm, W 60 cm, D 66 cm Photo © MAK/Nathan Murrell, 2010

  

Minimal: Art & Furniture from the MAK Collection

May 26-October 31, 2010

The exhibition "Minimal. Art and Furniture from the MAK Collection" finds its starting point in American Minimal Art, which was one of the most influential artistic movements of the 20th century’s second half, and goes on to deal with Minimal Art precursors and more recent further developments of minimalism in the field of furniture and “furniture-like” art. Many aspects of the minimalist aesthetic, characterized above all by a simple, clear and for the most part geometric formal language, are already evident in the furniture designed by architects during the early 20th century. Over the past few years, such furniture has been increasingly rediscovered by contemporary artists, some of whom refer explicitly to Minimal Art in their works. Even if minimalist art objects usually require a great deal of space in order to have their effect on the viewer, this exhibition—in keeping with the motto “maximally minimal”— dares to meet the viewers’ gaze with a comparatively large number of pieces of furniture and artworks placed within a small space.

In the strict sense, this exhibition contains only one true work of Minimal Art: an untitled wall object created by Donald Judd in 1989. The artist and architect Judd, who passed away in 1994, was one of the most important representatives of the movement. Now as then, his artistic oeuvre is of central importance to the MAK. Following his most important MAK exhibition, Donald Judd: Architecture (1991), Judd also took charge of the artistic installation of the MAK Permanent Collection’s Baroque Rococo Classicism, which reopened in 1993; he is also present with various minimalist works in the MAK Permanent Collection Contemporary Art, the Study Collection Furniture and the Works on Paper Collection. Accordingly, this artist’s extensively documented oeuvre also represents one of the starting points of Minimal.

Alongside the wall object, the exhibition includes various pieces of furniture by Judd; these are works which demonstrate in an almost exemplary way the idea of returning things to basic geometric and cubic forms, as well as the use of industrially prefabricated materials such as colored aluminum panels and solid wooden boards.

A counterpoint to the artistic personality of Judd is provided by the furniture of Josef Hoffmann, whose oeuvre is also represented in the collection of the MAK. Although ornamentation is one of the things for which the architect and designer Hoffmann is widely known, Hoffmann in fact authored a manifesto-like text for the periodical Das Interieur in 1901 in which he advocated “simple furniture,” and he also created a whole series of furniture which was abstracted to simple basic forms. However one cares to characterize the roles of the two antagonists of Viennese Modernism, Josef Hoffmann (co-founder of the Wiener Werkstätte) and Adolf Loos (who detested ornamentation), the “more minimalist” furniture was certainly designed by Hoffmann: his furniture in the so-called “Brettlstil” [board style], which construction emphasized the fact that they were made from simple, prefabricated wooden boards, could be regarded as precursors to minimalism.

Items on display include a softwood wall étagère from 1898 and a kitchen footstool which was created in 1899 for Paul Wittgenstein's country house (known as “Bergerhöhe”) in Hohenberg, Lower Austria. Some of the elements that would characterize Minimal Art later on can also be found in the furniture created around 1920 by Dutch architect and designer Gerrit Rietveld. He used machine-cut, standard-sized wooden blocks and boards painted in primary colors to construct furniture that seemed to consist only of geometrically arranged lines and color surfaces. Among these is the famous Red and Blue Chair, which he produced in multiple variants beginning in 1918 and which can also be seen in this exhibition; it can be categorized as one of those pieces of architect’s furniture which, during the first half of the 20th century, were viewed as programmatic manifestos of innovative lifestyles, societal utopias and a transformed—modern—conception of space. It is probably for this reason that Donald Judd, as well, was happy to furnish his own living and working spaces with pieces by Rietveld.

The aesthetic of Minimal Art itself likewise had a strong influence on designers, including on interior designers: furniture made in simple, geometric forms from industrially produced materials represents the continuation of a rationalist tradition that advocates reserve in terms of form and décor, strict functionalism and workmanship that is appropriate to the material being used, thus also adhering to modernist dictates of “good form.” Alongside Hubert Matthias Sanktjohanser’s Social Cube, made of variable, easy-to-handle basic elements, the items on display also include a simple chest from the Crate series by Jasper Morrison (which has been in progress since 2006), as well as the MAK Table created by Joao Silvas for the MAK Design Week of 2009.

In keeping with the “furniture-like” aspect of Minimal Art, numerous contemporary artists have taken up forms from furniture in their artworks and oriented themselves on furniture dimensions: Heimo Zobernig and Werner Feiersinger seem to often find a starting point in furniture for their large-scale sculptures: the analogy to utilitarian items means that these objects are anchored in the everyday experience of the viewers, while their simultaneous  lack of functionality also communicates something that is intensely irritating. 

In the same way, Layered Impasse Screen, an installation of rhythmized, colorful, transparent panels akin to a folding screen created by British artist Liam Gillick in 1998, serves viewers as a sort of artistic springboard from which to experience space in a different way; it is intended to encourage the fundamental reevaluation of one’s relationship to things—an intention which already played an important role in the artworks of the Minimalists. And while the Meuble by French artist Guillaume Leblon seems to represent something of a missing link between the “Brettlstil” of a Josef Hoffmann and the minimalist furniture of a Donald Judd, Judd’s oeuvre in turn quite literally represented a concrete starting point for Austrian designer Andreas Feldinger.

In his homage, "Remember Donald", Feldinger reworked a typical piece of Ikea furniture into a functional sculpture, in the process translating a graphic work by Judd into the three-dimensional realm.

For more information please visit: MAK, Vienna

 

Exhibitions Vienna. "Flowers for Kim Il Sung. Art and Architecture from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. MAK. The Curated Object

Stadion 1.Mai stadium 1st May, 1989, Sitzplätze für 150.000 Personen seats for 150.000 persons © Paektusan Academy of Architecture, Pyongyang

Panorama Pyongyang Paektusan Architekturakademie panorama Pyongyang Paektusan Architectural Academy, ohne Jahreszahl without date © Paektusan Academy of Architecture, Pyongyang

Lasst uns in der gesamten Gesellschaft eine Atmosphäre des Lesens und des Studierens errichten! Establish reading atmosphere, studying atmosphere throughout the whole society! 2010 Kim Myung Gon © Korean Art Gallery, Pyongyang

Blauer Himmel The blue sky over my country, 2005, Ri Sok Nam © Korean Art Gallery, Pyongyang

Flowers for Kim Il Sung: Art and Architecture from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea

May 18- September 5, 2010

The exhibition offers for the first time insight into the contemporary art, poster production and architecture of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, which hitherto was mostly not on show in international exhibitions. The show at the MAK was prepared in cooperation with the Korean Art Gallery and the Paektusan Academy of Architecture. In the spotlight is a culture that seems foreign to us, determined by the all-encompassing worship of “Eternal President” Kim Il Sung (deceased in 1994) and his currently reigning son Kim Jong Il, Chairman of the National Defence Commission, and characterized by the Chuch’e Idea, a specific interpretation of socialism. 

Around 100 oil and ink paintings, a representative selection of posters and a model of the “Chuch’e Tower”, the landmark of Pyongyang, will be presented, and is rounded off by architectural drawings and photographs.

For the first time, 16 portraits of the two most senior leaders of the country, Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong II, are exhibited. Generally they depict father and son together with representatives of the people, including factory workers, soldiers and peasants as well as children, and in a variety of settings.

This major exhibition at the MAK will be joined by a supporting program— lectures, films and a symposium—which deal with the art, culture and architecture of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

For more information please visit: MAK, Vienna 

Exhibitions Vienna. Fabled Fabrics. Ottoman Textiles in the MAK. Museum of Applied Arts/Contemporary Art (MAK), Vienna. The Curated Object

Satteldecke (Detail)

Türkei 2. Hälfte 16. Jahrhundert

Seide, Baumwolle, Leder, Wirkerei; H. 45 (138) cm, B. 99 cm

© MAK/Georg Mayer

Phelonion (Detail)

Türkei, Istanbul oder Bursa, 16. Jahrhundert

(„Kasel“ des christlich-orthodoxen Ritus)

Seide, Metallfäden, Lampas; H. 137 cm, B. 155 cm

© MAK/Georg Mayer

Festkeild

Türkei, 18. Jahrhundert

Seide, Baumwolle, Tambourstickerei; H. 136 cm, B. 197 cm

© MAK/Georg Mayer

Detail eines Festkleides

Türkei, 18. Jahrhundert

Seide, Baumwolle, Tambourstickerei; H. 136 cm, B. 197 cm

© MAK/Georg Mayer

Handtuch/Serviette (Detail) mit Trauerweiden

Türkei, 19. Jahrhundert

Leinen, Seide, Metallfäden, gleichseitige Stickerei; H. 94 cm, B. 52 cm

© MAK/Georg Mayer

Handtuch/Serviette (Detail) mit Moscheen

Türkei, 19. Jahrhundert

Baumwolle, Seide, Metallfäden, gleichseitige Stickerei; H. 91 cm, B. 48 cm

© MAK/Georg Mayer

Beutel aus Spitze

Türkei, 19. Jahrhundert

Seide, Metallfäden, Nähspitze (Bibila Spitze); H. 13 cm, B. 10 cm

© MAK/Georg Mayer

Fabled Fabrics: Ottoman Textiles in the MAK

 July 1, 2009 – February 7, 2010

The MAK has a high-quality and highly variegated collection of Ottoman textiles. A representative selection from these holdings will be on view for the first time ever in the upcoming exhibition “Fabled Fabrics”. The presentation includes artful embroidery from the 16th and 17th centuries as well as decorative scarves, or turban wraps with intricate embroidery applications, lavishly patterned silk fabrics, and an 18th century silk festive garb with subtle embroidery. Some of the fabrics for domestic, though not everyday, use— napkins, hand towels, sashes, cushion cases, draperies and blankets—are exhibited the first time here.

The textiles shown at the MAK did not always originate within the area of the former Ottoman Empire, which included, aside from Turkey, also a number of Middle-Eastern and North-African countries; some objects also come from the European parts of the Empire which the dynasty had brought under its control for shorter or longer periods in history and which included countries such as Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Serbia, and Armenia and almost extended—for the last time in 1683 as far north as Vienna. In the empire’s capital city, Constantinople/Istanbul, there were court workshops where carpets and embroideries were made mainly for the sultan and his entourage. The center of silk weaving was in Bursa, 90 kilometers south of the capital, while the areas around Usak, Konya, Gördes or Bergama were well known for their carpets and embroideries. Ottoman carpets, silk fabrics, and embroideries were much-sought-after foreign trade merchandise and a popular gifts, as, conversely, were Italian silks or German goldwork at the Ottoman court.

Some of the Ottoman textiles presented in the MAK exhibition come from court workshops; the major part, however, was produced by urban manufactories, which mainly employed men. The exhibition also shows embroideries made by women for domestic-use articles. Patterns used ranged from imaginative floral designs taking the form of tendrils, bouquets, or single naturalistic blossoms—such as tulips, daffodils, carnations, or cypresses—to small architectural motifs.

Wall hangings and draperies, cushions covers, tray doilies, embroidered hand towels, and napkins: embroideries were an integral part of everyday life and of a family’s set of home textiles, in particular for special occasions such as weddings, circumcision ceremonies, or funerals. Scarves and sashes of the most delicate linen or cotton fabric embroidered with silk or metal threads complemented the festive garb and accentuated the wealth and taste of their urban or rural wearers. Gifts were presented wrapped in selected pieces of textiles, and men’s or women’s dresses of precious, artfully woven silks were considered to be much-desirable gift for high-ranking dignitaries. The show “Fabled Fabrics. Ottoman Textiles in the MAK” at the MAK Textiles Study Collection congenially complements the current major MAK exhibition “Global:Lab. Art as a Message. Asia and Europe 1500–1700”, which will be on view at the MAK Exhibition Hall till September 27, 2009 and broadly addresses the subject of the exchange of art and knowledge between the Occident and Orient at the turn of the Modern Age.

For more information please visit: MAK, Vienna

Exhibitions Vienna. Furniture as Trophy. MAK. The Curated Object

Triumvirat-of-the-Seatyrs by Truniture

Oh my Deer by Turniture

Furniture as Trophy

May 27-Nov. 1, 2009

The exhibition “Furniture as Trophy” centers on the phenomenon of animal materials in furniture design, with a range of objects spanning from the Middle Ages to the present day. Furniture made of antlers or horn is juxtaposed to animal-skin-covered classics of modern interior design.

The oldest exhibit in the show comes from the MAK collection; it is a late-medieval half-figure lusterweibchen antler chandelier from the townhall of Eger (Cheb, Czech Republic), which will be contrasted with an antler ventilator in 1980s design by Uwe van Afferden. With a few exceptions, furniture made of hunting trophies became widely common only when it came into vogue in the 19th century. The MAK has exceptional holdings of furniture made of stag’s antlers, as, for, example, a set of different tables, chairs, and armchairs from the imperial hunting lodge at Neuberg an der Mürz, Styria.

Skins of bears, big cats, zebras, and other big game had been put to use in modernist interiors as bedspreads, rugs, or wall coverings ever since the early 20th century. In the 1920s, architects also began to use them for slipcovers for their innovative furniture designs. Thus, for example, the Swiss architect Le Corbusier designed, together with Charlotte Perriand and Pierre Jeanneret, luxury “rest machines” to relax on, which were covered with foal skin. On view in the exhibition will be his classic “Basculant”, a foal skin-covered armchair, as well as the legendary daybed of the Maharaja of Indore with a tubular-steel frame covered with leopard skin.

Other exhibition highlights include rare pieces such as an Inuit hunting stool of seal bones and skin, a loan from The Neue Sammlung, State Museum of Applied Arts and Design, Munich, a colonial smoking table made of giraffe bone and antelope horn, the tabletop covered with elephant skin, from the Museo di Storia Naturale, Venice, a sofa and a mirror from a late 19th century Austrian horn products salon.

Until today, different types of animal skin have been used in similar ways again and again to upgrade special seating furniture—or even the familiar mass-produced chair—and to give it a touch of luxury, exoticism or erotic appeal. Also featured in the exhibition are new and recent objects of horn, antler, fur and animal skin by designers and artists such Jerszy Seymour (www.jerszyseymour.com), Micha Brendel (www.micha-brendel.de), and Helmut Palla (www.turniture.at).

For more information please visit: MAK

Exhibitions Vienna. GEORGES ADÉAGBO. The Colonization and the History of the Colonized. MAK. The Curated Object

Georges Adéagbo. The Colonization and the History of the Colonized

Exhibition view MAK-Gallery

© Wolfgang Woessner/MAK, 2009

Georges Adéagbo. The Colonization and the History of the Colonized

Portrait Georges Adéagbo in the MAK-Gallery

© Peter Kainz/MAK, 2009

GEORGES ADÉAGBO: The Colonization and the History of the Colonized

April 1-Sep. 13, 2009

Georges Adéagbo, born 1942 in Cotonou, Benin, counts among the most important artists of West Africa. In 1999, he took part in the 48th Venice Biennale where he received the “Premio della giuria”, and in 2002, he was a participant of the documenta 11 (under the curatorship of Okwui Enwezor). 2008, he was the first contemporary artist ever to make an intervention on the premises of the Museo di Palazzo Vecchio in Florence.

From April 1, 2009, the MAK presents “archival” installations of the artist best known for his assemblages, in which he brings together different information carriers such as books, handwritten notes, photos, textiles, cult objects etc. arranging them into new narrative spaces. If Adéagbo incorporates sculptures in his work, which, from a European perspective, are labeled as “tribal art” or “primitivism”, the issue in fact is the re-conquering and repossession of previously “colonized” objects. His elaborate art-making process reaches out across boundaries between epochs, continents, cultures, and genres, starting out from the art of Africa and Oceania; the subjects that he addresses include religions, war, socialism, slavery, art, and history, as well as the stories of—mostly male—historical personalities.

For the MAK Gallery, Adéagbo is planning to cover the floor and walls with an“assemblage-like” installation, visualizing the history of colonization and the colonized in an arrangement of materials in rare density. Moreover, he will reach out beyond his own exhibition by intervening directly in sections of the MAK permanent exhibition which he will examine for colonial implications. In the permanent exhibition Baroque Rococo Classicism (with an artistic intervention by Donald Judd), for example, he will respond to a mid-18th century cabinet, a present made by the town of Eger to Emperor Karl VI.

As a piece of so-called state furniture, it represents symbolically a claim to hegemony over all continents, the meaning of which Adéagbo examines, questions, and transforms in various different ways. Adéagbo is well aware of the purposive character of the objects, but achieves the necessary artistic transformation precisely by placing them in new contexts, or unfolding new contexts, courageously altering history by re-telling it in a different way. His working method is based on combining objects made for him in Benin and others which he finds at or around the exhibition site and incorporates in his work; the pieces thus created always define a concrete frame of reference.

Georges Adéagbo was born as the oldest of eleven children in Cotonou, the largest city of Benin in West Africa. Against the wishes of his family, he went to study law in Abidjan, Côte D’Ivoire, and in Rouen, France. After the death of his father, his family urged him to return to Benin in 1971 where he lived in impoverished conditions. From this time until 1993, he created a large number of assemblages in his house, which happened to come to the attention of a French curator. Many important exhibitions followed: “Big City: Artists from Africa”, Serpentine Gallery, London, 1995; “La mort et la résurrection”, Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris, 1997; Johannesburg Biennale, Johannesburg, 1997; “Roteiros. Roteiros. Roteiros …”, São Paulo Biennal, São Paulo, 1998; “Kunstwelten im Dialog”, Museum Ludwig, Cologne, 1999; Biennale di Venezia, Venedig, 1999 (“Premio della giuria” for “The Story of the Lion”); “Abraham – the Friend of God”, P.S.1, New York, 2000; “Das Pythagoreische Zeitalter”, Galerie im Taxispalais, Innsbruck, 2001; documenta 11, Kassel, 2002; “Le théâtre du monde..!”, Museum Ludwig, Cologne, 2004; “Abraham, l’ami de Dieu. Philadelphia version”, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, 2006; “Tout de Moi à Tous”, DAAD Gallery, Berlin, 2007; “La rencontre..! Venise–Florence”, Museo di Palazzo Vecchio, Florenz, 2008.

For more information please visit: MAK

Exhibitions Vienna. COOP HIMMELB(L)AU Beyond the Blue. MAK – Austrian Museum of Applied Arts / Contemporary Art. The Curated Object: International Decorative Arts Exhibitions

COOP HIMMELB(L)AU
Beyond the Blue
12.12.2007 - 11.05.2008

The exhibition entitled “COOP HIMMELB(L)AU. Beyond the Blue” shows the team’s recent and very latest projects; for the exhibition a spectacular space installation has been specially conceived for the MAK Exhibition Hall, the core of which shows the constant development of urban projects.
Established in 1968 by Wolf D. Prix and Helmut Swiczinsky, COOP HIMMELB(L)AU are among the most important and innovative architects of our time, who, with their unconventional, cutting-edge work, have laid the foundation stone for the unparalleled global career of the architectural studio. Models, sketches, drawings, projections and animations offer deep insight into older as well as future buildings and projects, which trace the development in the architectural vocabulary of COOP HIMMELB(L)AU and its path from experiment to buildings, thereby demonstrating that a vision can ultimately become reality.
At present COOP HIMMELB(L)AU is working on projects in Europe, the USA, Asia, Mexico and the Middle East; examples include the Akron Art Museum in Ohio, USA (summer 2007), the BMW World in Munich (summer 2007), the Central Los Angeles Area High School #9 for the Visual and Performing Arts in Los Angeles (2008), the Musée des Confluences in Lyon (2008) and the House of Music in Aalborg, Denmark (2009). In 2004, COOP HIMMELB(L)AU won the competition for the construction of the European Central Bank headquarters in Frankfurt (2011), as well as that for the Busan Cinema Center in Busan, South Korea (2009) in 2005.

Exhibition
Wolf D. Prix, Peter Noever
Curator Martina Kandeler-Fritsch, Deputy Director Art Affairs
Exhibition Consultant
Jeffrey Kipnis, Professor of Architecture

For more information please visit: MAK – Austrian Museum of Applied Arts / Contemporary Art
-Joanne Molina

Exhibitions Vienna. LACE AND SO ON ...Bertha Pappenheim's Collections at the MAK. The Curated Object: International Decorative Arts Exhibitions

LACE AND SO ON ... Bertha Pappenheim's Collections at the MAK
03.10.2007 - 16.03.2008

MAK Textiles Study Collection
Anno O. alias Bertha Pappenheim, the first of Sigmund Freud's recorded “cases” to be treated with psychoanalytical discussion therapy, was not only a prominent Jewish women’s rights activist and protector of women in need, she was also known as a generous collector of lace and cast iron objects. A representative selection of these heterogeneous and yet linked objects which the collector both sold and donated to the MAK is shown here for the first time.

On October 2, 2007 prior to the exhibition opening, a memorial plaque was unveiled on house no. 2, Liechtensteinstraße in the ninth Viennese district, once Bertha Pappenheim's Viennese home (today owned by the Volksbank).

Curator Angela Völker, MAK Curator Textiles and Carpets

For more information please visit: MAK – Austrian Museum of Applied Arts / Contemporary Art
-Joanne Molina