Kunsthalle Wien

Kunsthalle Wien Prize 2024

The Kunsthalle Wien Prize 2024 exhibition presents the selected finalists and nominated artists. This annual exhibition aims to support emerging artists residing in Vienna and stimulate discussion on contemporary art. This year's featured artists include Rawan Almukhtar (from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna) and Ida Kammerloch (from the University of Applied Arts Vienna), each receiving a € 3,000 prize plus a production budget for their exhibition at Kunsthalle Wien.

Radical Software: Women, Art & Computing 1960–1991

This exhibition examines the pioneering role of women in digital art from 1960 to 1991. It features over one hundred works by fifty artists, showcasing painting, sculpture, installation, film, performance, and numerous computer-generated drawings and texts. The exhibition highlights women who were among the first to utilize computers—both mainframes and minicomputers—as tools for artistic creation. It also includes works by artists who made the computer their subject or employed computational methods involving algorithmic or mathematically-based systems. The journey starts in academic and industrial computer labs, advancing to early personal computers, situated in the context of the second wave of feminism. This exhibition aims to document a lesser-known history of digital art, challenging conventional narratives concerning art and technology by focusing solely on female contributors.

Nora Turato

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Nora Turato’s exhibition showcases a 62-meter mural that serves as an inaugural piece for an annual public commission at Kunsthalle Wien’s MuseumsQuartier. The mural utilizes language as its primary medium, engaging with both the verbal and written aspects to explore underlying power dynamics. This work vividly conveys a scream, representing one of the most fundamental forms of expression through a carefully crafted wall painting.

Vienna Digital Cultures

Model Collapse

Vienna Digital Cultures is a new festival organized collaboratively by FOTO ARSENAL WIEN and Kunsthalle Wien. It embodies both institutions' dedication to examining how new technologies influence culture, providing audiences with a contemporary platform featuring art, performance, and discourse. Curated by Nadim Samman, the theme for the 2025 edition is 'Model Collapse.' The festival launches in April with commissioned videos by Most Dismal Swamp across social media and a new website, followed by an exhibition in May at Kunsthalle Wien Karlsplatz and various city locations including Angewandte Innovation Lab, Reaktor Theater, ORF Funkhaus, and PRST club. The exhibition at Kunsthalle Wien Karlsplatz highlights internationally acclaimed artists such as Arvida Byström, Joey Holder, and Troika. Prominent speakers known for their critical insights into AI discourse, such as Kate Crawford, Paul Feigelfeld, Elke Schwarz, and Felix Stalder, will also contribute to the festival's programming.

Nicola L.

The first retrospective exhibition on the work of Nicola L. is organized in collaboration with Camden Art Centre, London; FRAC Bretagne, Rennes, and Museion, Bolzano. This exhibition features sculptures, paintings, collages, films, and performances from 1964 to 2014, showcasing a practice that bridges diverse movements and styles in 20th-century art while resisting straightforward categorization. It provides an in-depth exploration of a complex and expansive artistic practice that is frequently associated with pop art, feminism, and applied art. The exhibition brings together works from public and private collections across Europe and North America, presenting a unique opportunity to engage with Nicola L.'s comprehensive and multifaceted work, which addresses themes such as spirituality, sexuality, environmental issues, and political activism. Accompanying the exhibition is a new book published by the collaborating institutions and Lenz Press.

Ibrahim Mahama

Ibrahim Mahama is known for his large-scale installations that explore themes of history, labour, migration, and global capitalism, challenging perceptions of value, space, and the global economic systems that shape everyday life. Some of his most iconic works involve draping buildings and public spaces with repurposed jute sacks, once used to transport commodities like cocoa and coal. The exhibition at Kunsthalle Wien will present a series of new works that consider Ghana’s history via its material legacy. A large-scale installation takes up the sculptural question of mass through a series of readymades, both large and small. The mechanisms, vessels, and networks used for transporting goods and people serve as the foundation for sculptures, photographic, and video works that reflect on the act of loading, carrying, and unloading weight, as well as a more abstract notion of the weight of history.

Kunsthalle Wien Prize 2025

The Kunsthalle Wien Prize was originally established in 2002 and has been managed in collaboration with the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and the University of Applied Arts Vienna since 2014. This award aims to support emerging artists residing and working in Vienna while fostering discussions around contemporary art. It serves as a bridge between academic training and professional artistic practice. A graduate from each university is awarded €3,000 and is featured in a joint exhibition at Kunsthalle Wien. Each edition includes a publication containing commissioned essays and interviews with the artists. The eleventh edition will showcase two graduates selected from the upcoming diploma presentations taking place in January and June this year. Winners will be announced in the summer of 2025.

Guan Xiao

This exhibition showcases the innovative works of Guan Xiao that explore the interaction between art and digital media. Her art merges various forms such as sculpture, installation, and video, challenging simple categorization. By creatively combining objects, images, and media, she humorously engages with the museum context, presenting anachronistic pairings of the ancient and the futuristic, as well as the organic and the inorganic. Notable elements include oil paper umbrellas, camera tripods, car tires, ropes, and knee pads, which find their place in anthropomorphic sculptures and expansive installations that blend handcrafted details with industrially produced, digitally modified, or 3D-printed components. At Kunsthalle Wien, her exhibition will present a new series of sculptures that revolve around the fundamental themes of food and shelter, forming the core of a sophisticated narrative.

Guan Xiao

Working across the mediums of sculpture, installation, and video, Guan Xiao defies simple classification by blending unlikely combinations of objects, images, and media. Her art humorously engages with the museum context through anachronistic pairings of the ancient and the futuristic, as well as the organic and inorganic. Often, her works reference themes of presentation and reproduction. A diverse array of items, including oil-paper umbrellas, camera tripods, car wheels, ropes, and knee pads, are weaved into anthropomorphic sculptures and expansive installations that juxtapose artisanal elements with those that are mass-produced, digitally manipulated, or 3D printed. This exhibition at Kunsthalle Wien will showcase a new collection of sculptures centered around the fundamental themes of food and shelter, which will shape a rich and imaginative narrative.

Richard Hawkins

A retrospective of the American artist Richard Hawkins, showcasing his most significant works. The exhibition will feature paintings, collages, and sculptures that draw on the histories of art, literature, and popular culture, incorporating biographical details, anecdotes, and obsessive subcultures. Since the early 2000s, his work has embraced an eclectic mix of subjects ranging from Greek and Roman sculpture to steampunk, quoting influential artists like Otto Dix, Egon Schiele, Gustav Klimt, Pierre Bonnard, and Francis Bacon, while also paying homage to notable figures such as the Japanese choreographer Tatsumi and the artist Forrest Bess to explore the theme of desire. This exhibition at Kunsthalle Wien will be the largest presentation of his work in over a decade, displaying both new creations and selections from the past twenty years, and will be accompanied by a new monographic publication.