On the New - Young Scenes in Vienna

What interests young artists who live and work in Vienna? What subjects are in the air, what strategies do they use? The exhibition On the New. Young Scenes in Vienna is conceived as a stroll through local art communities.

In Vienna there is a varied and vibrant practice of art production and presentation by a new generation. In the numerous exhibition spaces and studios, currently anything seems possible. But how can an exhibition capture this diversity? On the New. Young Scenes in Vienna aims to reflect the vitality of Vienna’s art communities: artistic and curatorial formats combine to create a dynamic structure that will alter over the course of the exhibition.

On the one hand, constellations of existing and newly created work provide an insight into the practice of eighteen artists up to the age of thirty-five. On the other, twelve project spaces were invited to conceive one presentation each—without any guidelines—adding various perspectives from the city to the show. These presentations will be displayed in three spaces within the exhibition at an interval of three weeks.

The selection is obviously subjective and inevitably incomplete. And categories like ‘young’ and ‘the new’ are certainly problematic. Nevertheless, the curators relate the young Viennese art scenes, their protagonists, concerns, and attitudes to their expressive forms in an attempt to retrace “the new.” In the sum of the exhibition’s parts, tendencies become clear: For example, craft skills are once again playing a larger role than e.g., Post-Conceptual strategies. Virtuality and digital images are naturally part of the artists’ practice—as a means to an end or as the subject of their work. Questions of identity and representation are just as present as the examination of the body between social interaction and self-discipline. Moreover, a new nostalgia, a retreat to the private, the internal, to spiritual and fantastical concepts of the world can be understood as a response to the loss of utopias and future prospects.
 
Artists: Sasha Auerbakh, Anna-Sophie Berger, Cäcilia Brown, Marc-Alexandre Dumoulin, Melanie Ebenhoch, Johannes Gierlinger, Birke Gorm, Maureen Kaegi, Barbara Kapusta, Angelika Loderer, Nana Mandl, Matthias Noggler, Lukas Posch, Lucia Elena Průša, Rosa Rendl & Lonely Boys, Marina Sula, Philipp Timischl und Edin Zenun.