From 22 June 2013 MERANO ARTE and MUSEION Museum of modern and contemporary art of Bolzano host Desiring the Real, an exhibition organized by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Education, Art and Culture, Department of International Relations and Worship. The exhibition presents the works acquired in recent years by the art collection of the Federal Government, as well as some works on loan for the occasion.
As Claudia Schmied, Federal Minister of Education, Art and Culture of Austria says, “Art is a tool, a medium of encounter. This exchange aimed at presenting young Austrian art internationally is one of the priorities and objectives of my cultural policy. The priority is to position and support young Austrian artists in the global network. The presentation of the exhibition Desiring the real is therefore one of the concrete ways through which to pursue this objective: it will be an opening, a window on the reality in which we live”.
Desire as a creative and driving force of reality is the material of which art is made and is constituted in artistic research that translates existence into images, words, installations and films. Unlike in the past, art is no longer necessarily aimed at mimesis, at the mere and simple representation of reality, but has become an instrument of experimentation and reflection on the way of looking at the world and on the boundary between what we call reality and what which we call fiction.
A Merano Arte – until 8 September – the works of nine Austrian artists are proposed who are confronted with different models of reality and raise this theme to a central question of their poetics. The images by Caltrin Bolt, by Bele Marx & Gilles Mussard, by Margherita Spiluttini, the installation by Siggi Hofer, the video by Josef Dabernig, disregard the observer's expectations by undermining the logic of symbolic and linguistic associations, making us reflect on how the our gaze is influenced by the media filter and determined by culture and politics.
The photographs by Maria Hahnenkamp, the installation by Ulrike Königshofer, the video by Adriana Czernin and that by Hannes Zebedin further explore the theme of identity, the openness towards a multitude of interpretations and formal variations, the fact that existential complexity is irreducible to any concluded ordinary reading.
In the Project Room of MUSEUM - until September 15 – two unpublished projects are presented: an installation by Judith Fegerl, which deals with the architecture of the project room itself and a work by Leopold Kessler, which deals instead with the South Tyrolean territory. Rainer Gamsjäger designed a projection for the media facade for the opening. As part of Bolzano Danza and in collaboration with the Südtiroler Kulturinstitut, the Viennese dancer and choreographer Sebastian Prantl presents a performance (23 July, 18 pm).
Desiring the real will be inaugurated on 21 June 2013 at 18.00 in Merano Arte, in the presence of the Austrian Minister for Education, Art and Culture, Dr. Claudia Schmied.
Meran art – participating artists: Catrin Bolt (Friesach, 1979), Adriana Czernin (Sofia, 1969), Josef Dabernig (Kötschach-Mauthen, 1956), Maria Hahnenkamp (Eisenstadt, 1959), Siggi Hofer (Brunico, 1970), Ulrike Königshofer (Koglhof, 1981) , Bele Marx & Gilles Mussard (Salzburg, 1968, Paris, 1956), Margherita Spiluttini (Schwarzach, 1947), Hannes Zebedin (Lienz, 1976).
museum – participating artists: Judith Fegerl (Vienna, 1977), Rainer Gamsjäger (Bad Ischl, 1974), Leopold Kessler (Munich, 1976)
Desiring the real is a traveling exhibition presented starting from April 2012 in various countries around the world. Exhibition venues where the exhibition has already been hosted: the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade, Serbia, the MUAC University Museum of Contemporary Art in Mexico City and the FIC Cervantino Festival International, University of Guanajuato, Mexico, the Centro de Arte Contemporáneo Wifredo Lam in Havana, Cuba, the Gaal Gallery in Culiacan, Mexico and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, Croatia.
In the future, the exhibition will also move to exhibition venues in Macedonia, Turkey, France, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Russia, Latvia.
