Galerie im Taxispalais

INCREASINGLY COLOURFUL - Current Painting from Austria

With Markus Bacher, Christian Falsnaes, Manuel Gorkiewicz, Herbert Hinteregger, Luisa Kasalicky, Katrin Plavcak, Alfons Pressnitz, Martina Steckholzer, Marianne Vlaschits, Maja Vukoje, Herwig Weiser

This exhibition investigates current painting discourse within Austria by showcasing prominent and pioneering artistic positions, with an eye to reflecting the themes and controversies that the artists are addressing through the medium of painting.
Painting is currently an extremely dynamic field in the Austrian art scene, and is being taken in a number of different directions. It is not simply a matter of a plurality of approaches, however. In spite of their differing priorities, many of these different attitudes have one thing in common: they have all grown out of a questioning of the medium. Painting’s classic conflicts - abstract versus narrative, processual versus constructive, optical versus haptic - are not being fought anew; they are being treated playfully, and, in many cases, are being mixed together. Aside from reworking the history of the medium, there are a number of other issues, some of them entirely new, that play a role in current painting discourse. Historic avant-gardes have so often tried to rediscover the basic parameters of the medium by reducing their tools and techniques, but today it appears to be being achieved through an opening-up of the painting genre to other media and by engaging with images from society and mainstream culture, with their roles and with their language.

The exhibition is structured around the milestones in this integration of new content into – and the adding of new facets to - painting, featuring conceptual approaches that use history, media and society as avenues for reflecting on the field of painting and for expanding its scope, artworks that expand into three-dimensional space and can be navigated, and artworks that utilise unusual materials and techniques. It showcases approaches to painting that respond to current issues, and presents methodologies that unite painting with performance.