ESSL MUSEUM > Exhibitions

CURRENT
	>MARTIN SCHNUR: Vorspiegelung< [Pretence] 1 Feb. – 9 Jun. 2013 Martin Schnur is one of Austria’s up and coming painters. The Essl Museum acknowledges his work with a large-scale museum presentation that takes a look at the extensive creations of recent years. Various levels of reality refined into a whole are a distinctive feature of many of Schnur’s paintings. A second, clearly demarcated level of painting with people in it is inserted into a natural landscape, a picture of the natural world outside opens up in an interior. Bodies and natural landscapes serve as an experimental field for a painting where a new reality can be created poetically and sensually with light and shade, surface and space. The exhibition shows large-format oil paintings on canvas, paintings on copper and pastels and object works with which Schnur draws on his training as a sculptor. Alongside numerous collection works and loans, new works directly from his studio can also be seen.
	>GEORG BASELITZ< Works from 1968 to 2012 18 Jan. 2013 – 26 May 2013 In January, on the occasion of his 75th birthday, the Essl Museum is dedicating an exhibition to the work of Georg Baselitz. It will be arranged by Prof. Essl in close cooperation with the artist. The spectrum ranges from fracture pictures of the 1960s to early upside-down motifs of the 70s, the raw, direct painting of the 80s and 90s, the gentle, watercolour- style pictures of the 2000s to the most recent remix series in which the artist takes up motifs from his early years again. Baselitz is considered to be one of the most essential artists of the post-war generation in Germany, who, even when painting was declared to be dead in the 1960s and 70s, continued to consistently pursue this medium and thereby became a role model for the 1980s generation. The more than four decades of collection stocks testify to the long-standing friendship between the collector couple and the artist and give an insight into all his essential creative periods since the late 1960s.
	>A LITTLE MIGHT MUSIC – report from the art storage< curated by René Block 08 May – 18 Aug. 2013 With over 7,000 works, the comprehensive private collection of Agnes and Karlheinz Essl gives a unique overview of present-day international art, marked by a collector’s passion. After an artist, Albert Oehlen, received a carte blanche for an exhibition, this time the curator René Block has been invited. Block will thematically illuminate the collection holdings. In the 1960s, the internationally renowned curator, publisher, art collector and gallery owner became known as one of the youngest German gallery owners; among others he promoted Josef Beuys, Gerhard Richter and Georg Baselitz and from 1997 to 2006 he managed the Friedericianum Museum in Kassel. For many years, part of René Block’s focus has been on the south-east European area and Turkey. Since 2004 he has also been the jury president of the Essl Art Award CEE.
	HEAVEN IN THE GARDEN NATURE – LANDSCAPES Works from the Essl Collection at the SCHÖMER-HAUS 17.04.2013 – Frühjahr 2014 The series of presentations of current painting from the Essl Collection in the Schömer-Haus continues. This time the exhibition, curated by the collector Agnes Essl and Andreas Hoffer, focuses on the natural world. A work by the Danish artist Per Kirkeby lends the exhibition its title: „Heaven in the Garden“. Around 50 works from the collection that are dedicated to nature will be shown.

EXHIBITION PROGRAM 2013
	>GEORG BASELITZ< Works from 1968 to 2012 18 Jan. 2013 – 20 May 2013 In January, on the occasion of his 75th birthday, the Essl Museum is dedicating an exhibition to the work of Georg Baselitz. It will be arranged by Prof. Essl in close cooperation with the artist. The spectrum ranges from fracture pictures of the 1960s to early upside-down motifs of the 70s, the raw, direct painting of the 80s and 90s, the gentle, watercolour- style pictures of the 2000s to the most recent remix series in which the artist takes up motifs from his early years again. Baselitz is considered to be one of the most essential artists of the post-war generation in Germany, who, even when painting was declared to be dead in the 1960s and 70s, continued to consistently pursue this medium and thereby became a role model for the 1980s generation. The more than four decades of collection stocks testify to the long-standing friendship between the collector couple and the artist and give an insight into all his essential creative periods since the late 1960s.
	>MARTIN SCHNUR: Vorspiegelung< [Pretence] 1 Feb. – 9 Jun. 2013 Martin Schnur is one of Austria’s up and coming painters. The Essl Museum acknowledges his work with a large-scale museum presentation that takes a look at the extensive creations of recent years. Various levels of reality refined into a whole are a distinctive feature of many of Schnur’s paintings. A second, clearly demarcated level of painting with people in it is inserted into a natural landscape, a picture of the natural world outside opens up in an interior. Bodies and natural landscapes serve as an experimental field for a painting where a new reality can be created poetically and sensually with light and shade, surface and space. The exhibition shows large-format oil paintings on canvas, paintings on copper and pastels and object works with which Schnur draws on his training as a sculptor. Alongside numerous collection works and loans, new works directly from his studio can also be seen.
	>A LITTLE MIGHT MUSIC – report from the art storage< curated by René Block 08 May – 18 Aug. 2013 With over 7,000 works, the comprehensive private collection of Agnes and Karlheinz Essl gives a unique overview of present-day international art, marked by a collector’s passion. After an artist, Albert Oehlen, received a carte blanche for an exhibition, this time the curator René Block has been invited. Block will thematically illuminate the collection holdings. In the 1960s, the internationally renowned curator, publisher, art collector and gallery owner became known as one of the youngest German gallery owners; among others he promoted Josef Beuys, Gerhard Richter and Georg Baselitz and from 1997 to 2006 he managed the Friedericianum Museum in Kassel. For many years, part of René Block’s focus has been on the south-east European area and Turkey. Since 2004 he has also been the jury president of the Essl Art Award CEE.
	>TIM EITEL< Visitors 5 Jun. – 25 Aug. 2013 After the >Made in Leipzig< exhibition (2006) and the presentation of the works of Rosa Loy and Neo Rauch >Hinter den Gärten< [Behind the Gardens] (2011), the focus is again on a representative of the New Leipzig School. The work of Tim Eitel will be presented in a solo museum exhibition for the first time in Austria. Eitel’s quiet, sometimes contemplative pictures show green areas of the natural world and cool museum rooms often with isolated people wrapped in thought. The more recent paintings reveal a darker tonality. The artist paints everyday scenes of urban life – such as homeless people, a rubbish container or a mattress – in atmospherically dense compositions. In comparison to his early works, he reduces the contrasts and allows a stronger connection between the abstract, monochrome areas of colour and the figurative pictorial space. The works from the Essl Collection are supplemented by new works direct from the artist’s studios.
	>SOMMERBILDER< Summertime at the Essl Museum 19 Jun. – 29 Sept. 2013 Four summer paintings by Sigmar Polke, an enormous ice-cream cone by Donald Beachler, a beach scene by Wolfgang Herzig, a Spanish basket by Wolfgang Hollegha and ancient Greek statues by Jim Dine are just some of the works in the Large Hall of the Essl Museum that give one cause to linger over. Primarily it is a question of enjoying art in an airy, fresh and relaxed atmosphere. Viennese and Klosterneuburg celebrity chefs and barkeepers have been invited to be inspired by the works for summery creations that relate directly to the works in the exhibition. These recipes and drinks will be served in the bars, so the exhibition networks itself in urban space. The works should also inspire the visitors for their own creations. Enjoy art, enjoy the summer!
	>KURT KOCHERSCHEIDT< 4 Sept. – 17 Nov. 2013 Kurt Kappa Kocherscheidt is one of the artists of the post-war generation in Austria who went his very own independent way, away from the mainstream. Far from the Vienna School and the abstractionists around the Galerie St. Stephan, he developed what he called his “tropical style”, powerfully painted geometrical figures, primarily in earth and ochre tones, in archaic forms such as sphere, cube, cylinder or trapezoid. But apart from his painterly quality, Kocherscheidt also expanded into the field of sculpture and sometimes painted enormous, pieces of untreated pear-tree wood or oak in black and brown. “The great power of Kocherscheidt’s art lies not least in this merging of timelessness and contemporaneousness,” says the art historian Michael Lüthy. The Essl Museum is dedicating the first major retrospective for many years to the artist, who died in 1992. Elfi Semotan has agreed to curate the exhibition. The artist’s wife, herself an internationally famous photographer, has a profound knowledge of the work. Works from the Essl Collection, the Semotan Collection and the Morath Collection will be shown.
	>SEHNSUCHT – ICH< [Desire – I] Images of people from the Essl Collection 4 Sept. 2013 – 12 Jan. 2014 “One cannot teach a man anything. One can only enable him to learn from within himself”, Galileo Galilei The person and his or her image has always been a central theme in art. Based on contemporary artworks from the Essl Collection, the exhibition “Sehnsucht – Ich” [Desire – I] negotiates the diverse strategies by means of the artistic expression of grasping or also calling into question human existence and the self. In associatively designed spaces, the visitors encounter images of people in the most diverse physical and psychic forms and facets. Paintings and sculptural works by international artists can be seen. In the context of this exhibition, for the first time the Essl Museum is showing a new acquisition: large-format tapestries by the American photo-realist Chuck Close.
	>LIKE IT< 23 Oct. 13 – 6 Jan. 2014 Opening: Tue 22 Oct. The Essl Museum is not only known for its participative approach to art education, but it has also set new international standards in the often elitist field of exhibition curating, for example with the 2011 >Festival of the Animals< project. Children, young people and adults, e.g. Facebook friends, designed parts of the exhibition themselves and determined the selection of the works. For all those involved the innovative approach was an extremely exciting process, which is being continued in the >Like It< exhibition. Internationally, museums have recognised the significance of social networks and are working with them. The Essl Museum, too, has a large community of Facebook friends who are actively involved in events. These will now choose their personal highlights from a representative cross-section of works in the collection and thereby participate in the museum events. Absolute favourites will then be shown in the Large Hall in an exhibition conceived jointly by Facebook friends and the museum curators: like it!
	>TRANSCENDING CULTURES< 6 Dec. 2013 – 2 Mar. 2014 With this exhibition the Essl Museum is showing a broad and multi-layered insight into the young art scene of central and south-eastern Europe. What moves young artists in this region of Europe, how do they deal with the social, political and cultural upheavals and changes. What role does the private sphere play for them, what trends in international art do they reflect? Works will be shown by the 16 prize-winners of the Essl Art Award CEE 2013, which this year is being given for the fifth time by an international jury of artists from Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia and also, for the first time, Turkey.