open spaces | secret places. Works from the VERBUND COLLECTION, Vienna

Spatialisation in art

Since ancient times, people have been attempting to discuss the phenomenon of space in either cosmological, poetic or socio-cultural terms. In the Early Renaissance, the discovery of perspective led to the knowledge of being able to depict spatial depth in painting. In the visual arts, a collective awareness for spatial thinking developed from the 1960s onwards. Artists increasingly abandoned the two-dimensional surface, which went hand-in-hand with the loss of the supremacy of painting, and left the conventional place of production and presentation, their studios and the museums. The result is extensive environments, giant sculptural formations in the expanse of the landscape (land art) and interventions in the urban space. Recent decades illustrate that the present practice of art would be inconceivable without the earlier radical shift. The increasing spatialisation of art goes hand-in-hand with our practice of life, which has undergone dramatic social and cultural change through new spatial circumstances (virtual space, greater mobility). Precisely because of this fluctuating presence, we seem all the more keenly aware of our location. We used to ask on the phone, “How are you?”, today we ask, “Where are you?”. Against this background, the exhibition open spaces | secret places brings together works from 1970 to today from the VERBUND COLLECTION that divide the perception of space and place in different ways.

The exhibition is arranged into four areas: ‘Historical places’, ‘Psychological places’, ‘Spaces of the in-between’, ‘Creating space’. Eleanor Antin, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Tom Burr, Joachim Koester, James Welling and Nil Yalter document places that no longer exist in this form. In this way they link transience and memory. Barbara Bloom, Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, Ursula Mayer, Ernesto Neto and Markus Schinwald create a psychological space, a space that confronts us with our inner being and explores our personal longings and fears. The works by Vito Acconci, Simryn Gill, Louise Lawler, Tahmineh Monzavi, Sener Özmen and Erkan Özgen tell stories of the in-between. Places that bear witness to the absence of people, deconstructions of the aura and the departure from institutional spaces. Gordon Matta-Clark, Anthony McCall, Fred Sandback create place-specific interventions and create space by breaking it up, accentuating it or creating it from ephemeral materials such as light and mist.

Photos: © Philippe de Gobert / BOZAR, Brussels