Desiring the Real. Austria Contemporary

The exhibition acquaints Russian audience with contemporary art of Austria; it presents works of renowned masters and those of new generation – the most promising artists of the country. In their works the artists conduct artistic research of our reality and possible ways of its development; they use different genres – painting, drawing, photograph, video, sculpture and installation.

For the participants of the exhibition “desire” is a driving force of artistic process, and reality is material from which the art is forged. Unfolding different plot lines, all authors concur in their desire to find real knowledge with the means of art; knowledge which can change the outside world.

Being in search of cultural, political and historical identities, which comprise reality of mankind in one way or another, the authors offer different ways of its reconsideration. Their works pose a question – is a unified view on reality possible to achieve?

Each work represented at the exhibition is a combination of visible, conceivable and possible, and the exhibition as a whole is an attempt to reconsider our experience of reality.

The exposition at the Arsenal which includes works of 22 authors is a small part of the Artothek – a unique national collection of contemporary Austrian art of the Austrian Federal State. The exhibition, created as a mobile project, has already been to Serbia, Mexico, Croatia, Italy, Macedonia, Turkey, France, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cuba, and will travel to many other countries. In Russia the exhibition will be premiered in Nizhny Novgorod, and in autumn citizens of the capital will have an opportunity to see it. The project is realized as a part of the Austrian cultural season in Russia.