In Recent Works, his first solo show in Austria, Canadian artist Michael Snow shows photographic works and film installations from the past ten years. His film works are already familiar to Viennese and Austrian audiences as his experimental films have long been part of the collection of the Austrian Film Museum. During the exhibition, the museum will be cooperating with the Secession to show a program of early and rarely screened films by Snow.
Born in 1929, Snow has worked as a professional musician since the 1950s and began in the early 1960s to explore painting and sculpture, soon also developing an intense interest in experimental film and photography. With Wavelength (1966/67), he created what Annette Michelson has called a “paradigmatic” work of film history that also represents a turning point in his artistic career. He has now been working for over fifty years in a wide range of media, often operating on thresholds, exploring one medium from the perspective of another.
The seven works on show at the Secession offer an exemplary insight into the broad range of Snow’s work. His systematic examination of the structures, procedures, and limits of the various media is coupled with a discussion of questions concerning the perception of reality and art, always recognizing the “unpredictability of the spectator” (Martha Langford*).
