Ornament as Promise was the premise of the Pattern and Decoration movement in the United States (1975–1985). In this exhibition, mumok presents the rich collection of works from this movement of Peter and Irene Ludwig, in the largest presentation of Pattern and Decoration in German-speaking Europe since the 1980s. With oriental-style mosaics, monumental textile collages, paintings, installations, and performances, in the 1970s committed feminist artists like Miriam Schapiro, Joyce Kozloff, Valerie Jaudon, and Robert Kushner aimed to bring color, formal diversity, and emotion back into art. Decoration played a key role, with its connotations of the techniques of artisanship. Various ornamental traditions, from the Islamic world to North American Indians to Art Deco, were incorporated in their works, opening up a view beyond geographical and historical boundaries. A proximity to folk art was sought as a deliberate counter to the “purism” of the art of the 1960s.
mumok is presenting the first comprehensive retrospective of the work of the Austrian artist Ernst Caramelle. The exhibition includes all the phases of his work from 1974 to the present and attractively combines the artist’s various media and conceptual approaches. This exhibition does not focus entirely on chronology, but rather on the connections between works in different media (photos, videos, and reproductions of media images), mural painting, the so-called Gesso Pieces and Sun Pieces, drawings, watercolors, and prints. Caramelle’s work combines both abstraction and emblematic figuration—up to the point of floral formlessness. Formats vary from miniatures to large-scale wall paintings. Thematically, these works in many different media explore perception, the nature of space, media representation, artistic productivity, and the role of the artist and his embroilment in the market and with the museum. Ernst Caramelle will paint two new murals for mumok, with both thematic and formal links to the works in the exhibition.