Body Space
The Collections

The spaces in our minds as well as around our bodies and our desire for self-determination increasingly collide with structural inequities and exclusion. In a world rattled by wars, a pandemic, and anti-democratic tendencies, artists address the resulting feelings of claustrophobia and the existential experience of an inner dark void. Pictures by Kurt Schwitters and Edvard Munch illustrate how, beginning in the early twentieth century, that insight prompted a radical reinvention of art. The representation of a space or landscape gave way to efforts to chart the interior, making space a thoroughly subjective category. Since then, the tensions between the individual and society’s expectations have played an increasingly salient role for creative artists.

The exhibition is a thematic sequel to the presentation Breaking Down Walls!, which opened in the spring, and focuses on space as a phenomenon shaped by culture. Numerous newly installed works demonstrate in a wide variety of ways how space, body, and media respond to and depend on one another. They scrutinize societal and political criteria and expand the museum space by integrating spaces of action, experience, and recollection as well as creative thinking.

With works by
Annemarie Avramidis, Anatoliy Babiychuk, Günter Brus, Georg Eisler, Sylvie Fleury, Jari Genser, Johann Gierlinger, Bruno Gironcoli, Birke Gorm, Renée Green, Elisabeth Grübl, Ilse Haider, Barbara Holub, Max Klinger, Robert Klemmer, Gustav Klimt, Käthe Kollwitz, Aglaia Konrad, Eva Kot'átková, Richard Kratochwill, Dorit Margreiter Choy, Edvard Munch, Tim Noble & Sue Webster, Monika Pichler, Walter Pichler, Margot Pilz, Hans Pollhammer, Marjetica Potrč, Lois Renner, Annerose Riedl, Martha Rosler, Ashley Hans Scheirl, Egon Schiele, Kurt Schwitters, Thomas Stimm, Norbert Trummer, Werkstatt Rixdorfer Drucke, Martin Walde, Nikolaus Walter, Andreas Werner, and Stephen Willats.