TBA21

THIS IS NOT FOR YOU. Sculptural Discourses

23 Nov 2006 - 29 Apr 2007

THIS IS NOT FOR YOU. Sculptural Discourses

DURATION: November 23, 2006 - April 29, 2007

LOCATION: Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary
Himmelpfortgasse 13, 1010 Vienna, Austria

Free admission

ARTISTS: Ai Weiwei, Davide Balula, Fiona Banner, Monica Bonvicini, Chen Qiulin, Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset, Isa Genzken, Jeppe Hein, Jim Lambie, Sarah Lucas, Ján Mančuška, Ernesto Neto, Carsten Nicolai, Olaf Nicolai, Jorge Pardo, Gerwald Rockenschaub, Eva Rothschild, Rachel Selekman, Andreas Siekmann, Do-Ho Suh, and Heimo Zobernig

THIS IS NOT FOR YOU. Sculptural Discourses is an exhibition that re-frames sculpture, object, and sculptural installation as autonomous, contemporary forms of artistic practice. Sculptural practices today encompass a diversity of approaches, materials and formats that offer a mediated and physical encounter with the real. This increasingly expansive concept of sculpture presupposes a complex entanglement of object, image, text, and the viewer’s reception and requires a rigorous conceptual and theoretical positioning. In this context, sculpture functions as a model for the aesthetic production of reality – such as the transition from sculpture into architecture and design - but it is also a model for the investigation and interrogation of aesthetic production in and of itself.

The works in this exhibition draw upon a broad range of conceptual practices. They refer to various critical experiments with space and objects that both revolutionized and exploded the institution of art. They also utilize approaches that belong to contextual art and institutional critique originating in the 1980s and 1990s. Its point of departure is the examination of sculpture as a critical entity/body that, by virtue of its three-dimensionality, analyzes and grapples with the spatial, temporal, institutional, and social contexts.

While the exhibition presents selected works from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary collection to the public for the first time, it does not determine a particular aesthetic. Rather, it is the diversity of sculptural possibilities that are illuminated by the expanded possibilities of thought and practice. In spite of its overwhelming concrete presence, sculpture is understood primarily as a discursive initiative within a social, political, economic, and aesthetic field.

SPONSORED BY:
VIENNA INSURANCE GROUP
 

Tags: Davide Balula, Fiona Banner, Monica Bonvicini, Po-i Chen, Isa Genzken, Jeppe Hein, Jim Lambie, Sarah Lucas, Ján Mancuska, Ernesto Neto, Olaf Nicolai, Carsten Nicolai, Jorge Pardo, Gerwald Rockenschaub, Eva Rothschild, Andreas Siekmann, Do-ho Suh, Do Ho Suh, Ai Weiwei, Heimo Zobernig