The works by 24 artists on display at the Moscow NCCA is just a small part of the unique national collection of Austrian contemporary art, Artothek, holding over 36 000 pieces purchased over the last 30 years for the Austrian Federal Art Collection. Part of the collection is permanently housed by Austrian federal institutions, including universities, ministries and government offices, while the rest of the art works get displayed at temporary exhibitions.
The exhibition participants offer various art models of the relationship with the surrounding reality. Reflection on the socio-political reality remains an important trend in the works of Leopold Kessler, Hannes Zebedin, Franz Kapfer and others. Critique of the current regime and the contemporary system of maintaining it, various aspects of social and gender politics, freedom of opinions and action – all these issues, according to artist Nilbar Gures, significantly widen and deepen the space of public discussions around the most pressing problems of social life, if not completely turning “art into politics”.
Constructed or staged reality, the borderline between the real and the imaginary worlds, where reality and fiction blend and the models of everyday human behavior motivate one to give up his sense of self for the benefit of the collective self – these are the topics studied by artists (Iris Andraschek, Catrin Bolt, Siggi Hofer and others.
Issues of social identity, the feeling of emptiness and loss of social and personal coordinates so typical for a modern human, the order of things and its destruction get a unique interpretation in the works by Esther Stocker, Adriana Czernin, Josef Dabernig, David Moises and others.
Judith Fegerl, Michael Goldgruber, Michael Hopfner, Bele Marx and Margherita Spiluttini work with real spaces, examining why and how humans intrude on the landscape. They interpret the real space not only as a geographical given but also as a space of perception and imagination.
[Quelle: http://ncca.ru/]
