He was the only Austrian in the circle of Parisian Surrealists, at Frida Kahlo’s invitation he moved to Mexico, and he influenced American artists Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko: Wolfgang Paalen was truly a world-wide trailblazer of art in the mid-twentieth century. Scant attention has been paid to him in recent years, but now the time has come for the Belvedere to dedicate a comprehensive exhibition to his oeuvre.
Images tell stories. They do so not only via form and content but also through their pure, innate materiality. Painting tools and the medium of colour, their origins, and the way they are obtained often convey compelling stories in parallel to the picture’s subject matter. Austrian artist Johanna Kandl focuses on this content layer by juxtaposing the basic materials used in painting with her own works as well as numerous paintings from the Belvedere Collection.
Porcelain is like a material memory that can endure for centuries. UIi Aigner uses this medium as a starting-point to transform loss into a material message about life and survival. Her monumental porcelain vessel is to be shown in the series Carlone Contemporary in which contemporary artworks are juxtaposed with the Baroque pictorial programme of the Carlone Hall.