Annual theme

Entanglements

The Academy of Fine Arts Vienna’s contemporary exhibition programme, “Exhibit”, strives to find different ways of relating to each other and the world.

The theme for the Academy’s contemporary exhibition programme for 2022 is “Entanglements” with its motifs of enmeshment, interconnectedness and entwinement. In the face of social upheavals resulting from global warming, pandemics and financial crises, the various exhibition and workshop formats focus on the interconnectedness of people, along with people’s interaction with technology as well as its failure. The exhibitions pose possible alternatives for the way we interact with the world and our fellow humans, and propose a shift of emphasis from individualism and dominant paradigms of development and progress to consider new forms of coexistence, collectivity and process-based approaches.

Different spaces, different perspectives

Under this thematic rubric, the three Exhibit spaces – Exhibit Gallery, Exhibit Eschenbachgasse and Exhibit Studio  ̶  will address specific questions relating to the values of collectivity and community, and link them to ecological, gender and political issues. They will negotiate the role of artistic labour and the “exhibition” as a site for reflecting on issues of coexistence, societal cohesion and our connection to nature  – both as a medium and site for critical confrontation with the status quo, as well as their potential to function as contexts for collaborative design of contemporary utopias and alternative ways of living.

While collectivity and process-based approaches are negotiated on a content basis in the Exhibit Gallery, they also permeate the programme on a structural level at Exhibit Studio and Exhibit Eschenbachgasse. Consciously borrowing from this year’s documenta concept, throughout 2022 the Exhibit Eschenbachgasse rooms will be made available for collective use by the various university departments for teaching and workshop purposes, as well as a semi-public space for screenings and exhibitions.

The Exhibit Studio, a designated student exhibition space run by students at Schillerplatz, will also function as a flexible and resilient structure in terms of “Entanglements”. Viktoria Bayer and Natalia Gurova, studying sculpture and installation with Nora Schultz and object sculpture with Julian Goethe respectively, are programming a series of five presentations open to collaborations, experimentation, conversations, exhibitions and artistic/non-artistic practices.

Exhibit programme 2022
Exhibit Gallery and Exhibit Eschenbachgasse

The first exhibition of 2022 looks at infrastructure as an expression of our mutual entanglement. Beyond its status as an operating system of sorts of the globalised world, infrastructure is interpreted in the exhibition Conditions and Frameworks: Infrastructure as Form and Medium (9.3.–22.5.) as a set of immaterial relationships and symbolic actions that both visibly and invisibly characterise our present. The participating artists in the subsequent screening, Speculative Fiction (13.7.–16.10.), seek imaginary alternatives to an unfavourable political and ecological present. The films raise questions as to the interconnectedness of human and non-human life forms – ranging from our environmental surroundings to types of artificial intelligence – and reframe the concept of utopia beyond its modern definition. In autumn, the Academy’s PhD in Practice programme exhibition, Be Water My Friend (9.11.22–5.3.23), focuses in part on the utopian qualities of water. Water is considered from various perspectives: as a powerful force that can act as a catalyst of conflict and a mirror-scape of geopolitics; as a vital resource that enables communities to develop; and finally, as a model for a fluid and relative understanding of subjectivity.

Conditions and Frameworks: Infrastructure as Form and Medium
Exhibit Gallery: 9.3.–22.5.2022, Exhibit Eschenbachgasse: 9.3.–23.4.2022, Opening: 8.3.2022
Exhibit Eschenbachgasse, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Eschenbachgasse 11/corner of Getreidemarkt, 1010 Vienna, Tue–Fri 11am–6pm, Sat 11am–3pm
Exhibit Gallery, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Schillerplatz 3, OG1, 1010 Vienna, daily except Mon 10am–6pm
Information on current exhibitions

Speculative Fiction. Screening
Barbara Kapusta, Ursula Mayer, Flavia Mazzanti, Marlies Pöschl and others
Duration: 13.7.–16.10.2022, opening: 12.7.2022
Exhibit Gallery, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Schillerplatz 3, OG1, 1010 Vienna, daily except Mon 10am–6pm

Be Water, My Friend.
An exhibition by students in the PhD in Practice Programme
Duration: 9.11.2022–5.3.2023, opening: 8.11.2022
Exhibit Gallery, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Schillerplatz 3, OG1, 1010 Vienna, daily except Mon 10am–6pm

Exhibit programme 2022
Exhibit Eschenbachgasse

Following the Conditions and Frameworks: Infrastructure as Form and Medium exhibition, the Exhibit Eschenbachgasse space will switch into an open format for use by the various institutes of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna for short exhibitions, presentations, workshops, screenings, readings, etc. Scheduled events include:

On painting
Lecture series by the Abstract Painting Department (Institute of Fine Arts)
Event dates: 5.5. and 6.5, 5.7 and 6.7, 20.10. and 21.10., 15.11. and 16.11.2022
Exhibit Eschenbachgasse, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Eschenbachgasse 11/corner of Getreidemarkt, 1010 Vienna

Spheres and Cones: Plants as Practioners
A discursive laboratory of the artistic research project “Unstable Bodies” (Institute for Art and Architecture)
Event date: 9.5.–26.5.2022
Exhibit Eschenbachgasse, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Eschenbachgasse 11/corner Getreidemarkt, 1010 Vienna

Exhibit programme 2022
Exhibit Studio

The Exhibit Studio is a new student-run exhibition space for students. Situated in the Academy building at Schillerplatz it is coordinated and curated by Viktoria Bayer and Natalia Gurova. In 2022, they are planning five exhibitions whose common denominator is the question of how we can respond to the crises that define our current reality through art and artistic methods.

Stressless Space
Duration: 23.3.–29.5.2022, opening: 22.3.2022
Exhibit Studio, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Schillerplatz 3, OG1, 1010 Vienna, daily except Mon 10am–6p
Information on current exhibitions

Past and upcoming exhibitions:
Resilience and Survival Strategies, 12.2.–13.3.2022, opening: 11.2.2022 
Class/Capital , 13.7.–25.9.2022, opening: 12.7.2022
Liquidity , 12.10.–18.12.2022, Opening: 11.10.2022