Sucession, Association of Visual Artists, Friedrichstraße 12. A-1010 Vienna

  • Banu Cennetoglu Shiri Zinn Pavilion II Within Limits 19921 1995 Unruhe der Form Unrest of Form Secession 2013 photo Oliver Ottenschlaeger
    Title : Banu Cennetoglu Shiri Zinn Pavilion II Within Limits 19921 1995 Unruhe der Form Unrest of Form Secession 2013 photo Oliver Ottenschlaeger
  • Boris Ondreicka Boris Ondreicka Entoptic Tacit Unruhe der Form Unrest of Form Secession 203 photo Oliver Ottenschlaeger 02
    Title : Boris Ondreicka Boris Ondreicka Entoptic Tacit Unruhe der Form Unrest of Form Secession 203 photo Oliver Ottenschlaeger 02
  • Chris Kondek Not All Germans Believe in God, But They All Believe in The Bundesbank Unruhe der Form Unrest of Form installation view Secession 2013 c Oliver Ottenschlaeger
    Title : Chris Kondek Not All Germans Believe in God, But They All Believe in The Bundesbank Unruhe der Form Unrest of Form installation view Secession 2013 c Oliver Ottenschlaeger
  • Dmitri Gutov Das Lifshitz Institut The Lifshitz Institute Unruhe der Form Unrest of Form Ausstellungssansicht installation view Secessoin 2013 photo Oliver Ottenschlaeger
    Title : Dmitri Gutov Das Lifshitz Institut The Lifshitz Institute Unruhe der Form Unrest of Form Ausstellungssansicht installation view Secessoin 2013 photo Oliver Ottenschlaeger
  • Dmitri Gutov Neil Belufa  Party Island Aquarium 2 Unruhe der Form Unrest of Form Secession 2013 photo Oliver Ottenschlaeger
    Title : Dmitri Gutov Neil Belufa Party Island Aquarium 2 Unruhe der Form Unrest of Form Secession 2013 photo Oliver Ottenschlaeger
  • Dora Garcia Das Unangemessene The Inadequate 2013  Photo Oliver Ottenschlager Secession 2013
    Title : Dora Garcia Das Unangemessene The Inadequate 2013 Photo Oliver Ottenschlager Secession 2013
  • Hannah Hurtzig Mobile Academy Unruhe der Form Unrest of Form Secession 2013 photo Oliver Ottenschlaeger
    Title : Hannah Hurtzig Mobile Academy Unruhe der Form Unrest of Form Secession 2013 photo Oliver Ottenschlaeger
  • Heinz Frank Skulpturen Sculptures Johannes Porsch Display Unruhe der Form Unrest of Form Secession 2013 photo Oliver Ottenschlaeger
    Title : Heinz Frank Skulpturen Sculptures Johannes Porsch Display Unruhe der Form Unrest of Form Secession 2013 photo Oliver Ottenschlaeger
  • Henrik Olesen Introducing my family 2010 Unruhe der Form Unrest of Form Secession 2013 photo Oliver Ottenschlaeger
    Title : Henrik Olesen Introducing my family 2010 Unruhe der Form Unrest of Form Secession 2013 photo Oliver Ottenschlaeger
  • Johannes Porsch Display Jimmie Durham Untitled Hassan Khan Twist Ad Reinhardt Red Painting 1953 Unruhe der Form Unrest of Form Secession 2013 photo Oliver Ottenschlaeger
    Title : Johannes Porsch Display Jimmie Durham Untitled Hassan Khan Twist Ad Reinhardt Red Painting 1953 Unruhe der Form Unrest of Form Secession 2013 photo Oliver Ottenschlaeger
  • Tanja Widman  TJW TJW by presents Hard Currency Revaluation Unruhe der Form Unrest of Form Ausstellungsansicht installation view Secession 2013 photo Oliver Ottenschlaeger
    Title : Tanja Widman TJW TJW by presents Hard Currency Revaluation Unruhe der Form Unrest of Form Ausstellungsansicht installation view Secession 2013 photo Oliver Ottenschlaeger
  • Vladimir Tatlin Buehnenbildmodell model for set design Zangezi Unruhe der Form Unrest of Form Secession 2013 photo Oliver Ottenschlaeger
    Title : Vladimir Tatlin Buehnenbildmodell model for set design Zangezi Unruhe der Form Unrest of Form Secession 2013 photo Oliver Ottenschlaeger


Unrest of Form. Imaging the Political Subject
Sucession, Association of Visual Artists, Vienna
11 May - 16 June 2013
Press Release

The annual group show has become a firm fixture in the Secession’s program of exhibitions and events. The curators invited to stage this exhibition are tasked’like the artists themselves’with creating a new project premised on as much latitude as possible with regard to content. Among the internationally acclaimed personalities who have risen to the challenge in recent years are Pierre Bal Blanc, Moritz Küng, and Catherine David.

This year, the series will continue with a very special project: Unrest of form. Imagining the Political Subject, an exhibition parcours curated by Karl Baratta, Stefanie Carp, Matthias Pees, Hedwig Saxenhuber, and Georg Schöllhammer.

How can the art of today foster resistance against economic structures in which it participates itself’ Behind the facades of spaces conceived as areas of freedom, hasn’t the power of radical subjectivity and poetry, of the difficult and fractious that evades easy usability, of that which denies itself to consumption, long been absorbed and defused’ Isn’t the project of a political aesthetic that extends beyond the type of activism guzzled up by the media something we must now view as being truncated and sidelined’ And finally, can this ‘historical aporia’ (as it might justifiably be designated) be heightened to such an extent that artistic blueprints of political subjectivity can also unfold anew in response’

Questions such as these form the point of departure for the project Unrest of Form. The route traced out here seeks to open up a space conceived as a realm of aesthetic action, made manifest in acts of subjectification and linguistic interventions, and disrupting pre-determined identities, positioning and visibilities.

This emerges, for example, in the complex web of interactions between the fine arts, performance and theatre. This is a field where myriad new forms of co-operation emerged whenever the aesthetic and the political embraced the same agenda, such as in the 1920s or 1960s. It is this new interrelationship of image and speech, currently again pursued by numerous artists of both genres, that is centrally explored in Unrest of Form. Figures of the voice as a medium of political articulation - oration, defense and prosecution pleadings in court, stylised stage speech, conversation or the proclamation of a dubious legal act, slogans, debate and media controversy stand alongside self-encrypting sculptural positions.

The resistance of art, it seems to us, lies in the way in which it nurtures this tension and does not transition into politics. For isn’t it often precisely that dimension of blurring, the way in which compressed formalised meanings and structures are rendered fluid, that reveals the interrelationship between aesthetic work, between art and politics’

András Pálffy, Karl Baratta, Stefanie Carp, Matthias Pees, Hedwig Saxenhuber, Georg Schöllhammer


President of the Sucession and curators

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