Werkschau exhibitions
In 1996, the collective at FOTOGALERIE WIEN began with solo exhibitions dedicated to Austrian artists, who contributed substantially to the development of fine art photography and new media in this country
Since then, this concept with the title WERKSCHAU, has become an annual focal point of the exhibition program.
The presentations are conceptualized as retrospectives and are developed in collaboration with the artists.
The WERKSCHAU series offers the opportunity to recognize outstanding accomplishments on the on hand, and at the same time, the WERKSCHAU provides a historic overview of previous artistic discourses and trends.
A catalog is published to accompany each WERKSCHAU exhibition. Additionally, since 2002, a limited WERKSCHAU edition is being offered.
So far, a cross section of works from the following artists has been exhibited:
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WERKSCHAU XXIX: KARL-HEINZ KLOPF
22. October 2024 — 23. November 2024
The works shown by Karl-Heinz Klopf deal with issues such as urbanisation, globalisation or digital and media entanglements and are contrasted with the exemplary social space of the individual. The exhibition in which he is presenting films, photographs and installations from the last forty years, begins with the early photograph, K, from 1981.[…]
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WERKSCHAU XXVIII – ANDREA VAN DER STRAETEN
24. October 2023 — 25. November 2023
Andrea van der Straeten’s works are representative of the changes the medium of photography underwent in the 1980s and which introduced it into the art world where it was received with open arms. As part of this movement, Andrea van der Straeten conceived and produced photographs for the wall, rejected the rules of format, presented her photos as large-scale displays or lying on the floor, used new large-format paper sizes or pre-tinted special papers which came onto the market. […]
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WERKSCHAU XXVII – CHRISTIAN WACHTER
4. October 2022 — 26. November 2022
Christian Wachter augments the principal photographic dispositif of his work with semantic, conceptual and even performative elements so that it sometimes seems as if he is about to leave photography behind when he is often actually re-engaging and paraphrasing its very parameters. Here, formal decisions such as repetitions and sequences are as formative to the works as they can be narratively austere and cryptic, as it is especially the case with the two series NFT-C (Non-Fungible Tobacco-Containers) or Diana. They speak of a quasi doubled-up “has-been” that is inherent to the motifs and the photograph, but they also contain moments of archiving or retrospection. Likewise the cartridge cases in Diana and the cigarette packets in NFT-C speak of a kind of survivance when waste products become the protagonists of conceptual reflection .[…]
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WERKSCHAU XXVI – HEIDI HARSIEBER
12. October 2021 — 13. November 2021
Photographer Heidi Harsieber has an eye for the incongruous in an ostensibly ordered world. She notices it and captures it through the eye of her camera. Often one has to look a number of times in order to be able to precisely determine what is unsettling. But even a glance can, in a split second, trigger a feeling of unease. Something puzzling, terrifying, horrifying invades a situation in which one should actually feel safe. Heidi Harsieber’s photographic universe is peopled by bodies and body parts. At times the photographer approaches her subject matter like a fashion photographer, she arranges a dress, a stocking, long hair. And yet there is always something ambiguous that demands something from the viewer. One has to get involved. […]
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WERKSCHAU XXV – GÜNTHER SELICHAR
13. October 2020 — 14. November 2020
NO MEDIA BEYOND THIS POINT – the core of Günther Selichar’s appeal to his public to consciously and critically look at the influence of media mediated images or controlled information. With terms such as OBSERVING SYSTEMS or EMBEDDED [journalist] Selichar creates tags that delineate the theoretical framework for his engagement with phenomena relating to mass media […]
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WERKSCHAU XXIV – MICHAELA MOSCOUW
15. October 2019 — 16. November 2019
Again and again during the years of her art practice, Moscouw has contested conventional injunctions and expectations, consciously seeking out borders and infracting them. This also applies to her obsessive methods of working under often extreme circumstances that are frequently in external public space. She created work in which disappearance and disintegration is inherent and its destruction seemed as an apperently consistent result for the artist. […]
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WERKSCHAU XXIII – SABINE BITTER & HELMUT WEBER
16. October 2018 — 17. November 2018
The artists Sabine Bitter and Helmut Weber, who have worked together since 1993, have a special position within the canon of Austrian – and in the meantime international – artistic practice of photography. From early on – and continuing up to the present – social processes of transformation during the transition from modernity to neoliberal globalism have been central to their projects. These they examine by taking examples from the fields of architecture, urban development and urbanism though they are not solely concerned with representations of these transformations. For them, photography is a field of praxis that analyses pictorial conventions and ideologies of photographic images, subjecting them to various forms of intervention. […]
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WERKSCHAU XXII – ROBERT F. HAMMERSTIEL
24. October 2017 — 25. November 2017
In his art works RobertF. Hammerstiel is concerned with the human desire for happiness, comfort, security, idyllic surroundings and the associated wish-fulfilment projections. The acknowledgement of existential limitations and the hopelessness of being trapped in the Sisyphus-like circle of life combined with an increasing loss of orientation in a world that seems difficult to access leads to many people fleeing from reality into illusionary worlds of substitutes and withdrawals based on goods which the consumer industry offers via its effective advertising. These surrogates include private homes which provides the title of the artist’s retrospective in the FOTOGALERIE WIEN: Home at Last. […]
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WERKSCHAU XXI – MARIA HAHNENKAMP
24. June 2016 — 29. July 2016
Maria Hahnenkamp is regarded as one of the pivotal artists of the second generation of Austrian feminists whose main concern in her predominantly photographic works is advancing the critical examination and analysis of the status of the female body in our society. In contrast to her predecessors she does not bring her own body into performative and precarious circumstances. Instead, she analyses the social and media treatment of the female body per se or the resultant psychological effects while searching for a manifestation of this complex system of power and subjugation on a level that is simultaneously sensual and intellectual. […]
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WERKSCHAU XX – PRINZGAU/podgorschek
23. June 2015 — 25. July 2015
For WERKSCHAU XX entitled Ganz Ohne TiTel PRINZGAU/podgorschek have developed an interdisciplinary exhibition concept which is specifically planned for the gallery space and focuses on photography and film. It will show a cross-section of their extensive and multi-facetted work with older and more recent works and approaches. […]
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WERKSCHAU XIX – MICHAEL MAURACHER
17. June 2014 — 19. July 2014
The FOTOGALERIE WIEN successfully invited Michael Mauracher to take on this year’s “Werkschau”. Born in 1954 in Klagenfurt, the artist grew up in Salzburg and lives here. He is a co-founder of Galerie Fotohof, Senior Lecturer at the Mozarteum University, Salzburg and Honorary Professor at the Academy of Visual Arts, Leipzig and will be showing a cross-section of his work from the late 1970s to the present. A catalogue will be published for the exhibition along with Fotoedition No. 13. The focus of the presentation is on the relationship of film and photography – the title is taken from the Werkbund exhibition of 1929, initially because of its succinct, denotative naming of the two mediums that greatly influenced the twentieth century –as well as on the autobiographical aspects of Michael Mauracher’s work and its inquiries which reflect on the two mediums. […]
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WERKSCHAU XVIII – INGEBORG STROBL
18. June 2013 — 20. July 2013
A retrospective as a conceptual work, as a trawl through the archives – according to precisely defined parameters and all the restrictions they entail. One photograph selected from each year of photographic activity, starting in 1967 with the oldest existing negatives. All on film, all of it in small format, initially in black and white, then later on in colour. All the selected negatives were digitised in 2013, then processed to the same format, with added texts featuring place names and image descriptions. A uniform series spanning more than 40 years that might be interpreted either as a subjective commentary on social change or as the personal expression of mood and sentiment. Given these criteria, so many aspects, themes and facets, and all manner of projects and travels could not be taken into account – so this series is just ONE possible choice; countless other variants could have been retrieved from the archives and sorted according to different priorities. The present selection has been guided by defining memories – of phases in life, events, moods, landscapes, and journeys. […]
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WERKSCHAU XVII – ROBERT ZAHORNICKY
19. June 2012 — 21. July 2012
For this year’s Werkschau FOTOGALERIE WIEN has been able to win over Robert Zahornicky. The involvement with the subjects of “intervening in reality” or “playing with perception and reality” run through this retrospective of the artist’s work like a guiding thread. A catalogue and a Werkschau Photo Edition (No. 11) supplement the exhibition. […]
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WERKSCHAU XVI – HANS KUPELWIESER
21. June 2011 — 23. July 2011
This year’s WERKSCHAU is dedicated to the works of Hans Kupelwieser, whose works operate at the intersection of photography and sculpture.
A retrospective catalogue and the Werkschau Fotoedition Nr. 10 accompany WERKSCHAU XVI.
This WERKSCHAU, dedicated to Hans Kupelwieser (born 1948 in Lunz am See, Lower Austria, who lives and works in Vienna), demonstrates the interdependence of various media in his works through a presentation of a large selection of his earlier and more recent objects, photograms, photographs, and collages. Recognized as an advocate of the “expanded” notion of sculpture, the artist is decidedly concerned with the investigation of space through his sculptural objects, but he is also interested in experimenting with material and content using various materials, such as aluminum, rubber, and steel, often using means of illusion in regards to form and function. […] -
22. June 2010 — 24. July 2010
In contrast to the Werkschau exhibitions that have taken place until now, Lisl Ponger’s WERKSCHAU is not a retrospective in the classical sense. It is, rather, a kind of “deconstructed Werkschau” (Ponger), an installation consisting of a photo studio, a darkroom, and a cinema. Ponger’s work is about stereotypes, racisms, and how, at the intersection of art, art history, and ethnology, ways of seeing are constructed. The Werkschau’s subtitle, Fact or Truth, is the exhibition’s leitmotif and refers to the thematic interests and investigations in Ponger’s work. The installation can be read as a sort of visualization of her methods, an example that can be walked through. […]
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23. June 2009 — 25. July 2009
Red. Tagrot, Boston red, zinnober. (Day red, Boston red, vermilion.) In numerous works, red has been Inge Dick’s motif. And red is also the predominant color in her Werkschau at the Fotogalerie Wien. Whereby, red is only an auxiliary term for the palette of red tones, rich in nuances, that Inge Dick has elicited with devices for the many-part Polaroid series since the early 1980s and most recently, for the 13 1⁄2 hour-long film zinnober. The author Bodo Hell wrote a “red list”[1] for her on which at least 81 red tones have a name in the German language, without having yet included the Pantone numbers or RGB values. […]
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17. June 2008 — 19. July 2008
Opening: Monday, 16. June, 6:00pm Opening speech: Edith Almhofer ACCOMPANYING PROGRAMS WERKSCHAU XIII – INTAKT – THE FEMALE PIONEERS PROGRAM I: Films und Videos from Moucle Blackout and Linda Christanell FRIDAY 27. JUNE, 7:00PM PROGRAM II: Finissage and pannel-discussion with the artists Witnesses to History Discussion moderator: Brigitte Borchhardt-Birbaumer FRIDAY 18. JULY, 7:00PM FOR WERKSCHAU […]
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WERKSCHAU XII – GOTTFRIED BECHTOLD
19. June 2007 — 21. July 2007
Gottfried Bechtold is one of the most outstanding and multifaceted artist personalities of our time. Both interdisciplinary as well as multimedia define his work. His main interests include expanded sculptural ideas that conceptually manifest themselves in his video and film works. […]
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WERKSCHAU XI – HORÁKOVÁ & MAURER
18. July 2006 — 31. August 2006
Mit Tamara Horakova + Ewald Maurer zeigt die Fotogalerie Wien nun die 11. Werkschau herausragender österreichischer KünstlerInnen, deren zentrales Medium die Fotografie ist. Das Künstlerpaar Tamara Horakova + Ewald Maurer (beide 1947 geboren) hat sich für eine Auswahl ihrer Werke ab 1996 entschieden, an welchen ihre konstruktive Arbeitsweise deutlich wird. Denn – von der bildenden Kunst kommend (beide studierten auf der Akademie, wo die Werkschau nun auch stattfindet) fassen sie das (fotografische) Bild als etwas zu konstruierendes auf und nicht als bloßes Abbild, das auf eine Identität mit seinem Gegenstand zielt: Das Bild ist ein Produkt der künstlerischen Dimensionen – aus den Materialien der Fotografie (Licht, Zeit, Blickwinkel) bzw. des Prozesses (Probestreifen) und des Ateliers (gelagerte Fotopapierrollen, Lichtfelder an den Wänden oder das Werkzeug Computer). […]
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14. June 2005 — 20. July 2005
Branko Lenart, born 1948 in Ptuj, Slovenia immigrated with his parents in 1954 to Austria. Today he lives and works in Graz. Branko has a critical spirit and a strong political engagement. As an artist as well as co-founder of the ARTIKEL VII KULTURVEREINS he actively fights for the political and cultural rights of the Slovenian minority in Styria. […]
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22. June 2004 — 29. July 2004
Friedl Kubelka’s work is a continual discourse with these immanent specifications of the photographic medium – here in the retrospective, which encompasses so much of what she has not yet shown, it becomes particularly clear. The fact that most of her work is directed at first sight against these restrictions, that they speak of waiving such obligations and exclusions, lets her preoccupation become only the more clearer. […]
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24. June 2003 — 30. July 2003
Besides Wais’ photographic-innovative Oeuvre, and his love to make use of different artistic media (Photography, Painting, Drawings, Literature, Objects, Composition and Design) Wais is probably one of the most colorful personalities in the Austrian Photo-Scene. In 1981 he founded the FOTOGALERIE WIEN; in 1991 he organized the symposium “Eastern Academy” (Workshops and lectures of Hungarian and Czech artists of photography) which should enforce the exchange of ideas between East and West. Short after he founded the Artist group “Ostwind”; Wais organized many workshops in which he supported and animated young artists to develop their skills and precise their work.
For the first time, FOTOGALERIE WIEN is showing the retrospective of Josef Wais’ photographic artworks. A catalogue including text of Bodo Hell and the FOTOGALERIE WIEN-Werkschauedition Nr.2 will be issued for the exhibition. At the Finissage, on Tuesday July 29th, at 6pm there will be an open discussion with the artist followed by a performance of one of his compositions. […] -
WERKSCHAU VII – RENATE BERTLMANN
25. June 2002 — 31. July 2002
Since the early 1970’s, “Amo ergo sum” has been the maxim of Renate Bertlmann’s artistic investigation of the timeless and provocative relationship of tension between Eros and Thanatos. In the sensitive border-zone between kitsch, art and taboo, her diverse creations celebrate the trivial myths of desire and research the ironic, utopian, and pornographic aspects of sexual love. In opulent, plastic and picturesque settings, which are analyzed with film and photography in a second work sequence, the artist visualizes the attraction of opposites and takes aspects of gender differences into consideration. Immediately touching pictures describe the power of desire as well as feelings of shame, and discover the sensual fascination which can express intimacy as well as distance. […]
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8. February 2001 — 3. March 2001
The Genesis of the Image
On Heinz Cibulka’s Photo-Artistic Work from 1972 to 2000. By Kurt Kaindl
From: Fotogalerie Wien (Pub.), Werkschau VI : Heinz Cibulka, Wien, Triton Verlag 2001
Translation: Susanne Steinacher
Right from the beginning […] -
WERKSCHAU V – ELFRIEDE MEJCHAR
3. February 2000 — 26. February 2000
The fascination with experiencing a subjective perception of present reality in order to reach no more and no less than material certainty through a photographic view, is cultivated by the decisive characteristic feature of Elfriede Mejchar’s multi-faceted oeuvres. Driven by an unquenchable lust for a life in pictures and guided by a certain feel for aesthetic qualities, the intriguing doyenne, whom Otto Breicha affectionately calls the ‘restless retiree’, has in the last five decades created a unique contribution to domestic photographic art. With balanced pictographic designs, composed to the last detail, she was able to create a refreshing program that contrasts with the ubiquitous trends of glamour, intellect and constructs. They belong to the most remarkable domestic creations of the past half-century. […]
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4. February 1999 — 27. February 1999
Leo Kandl presents himself as a meticulous chronicler of the banal. With precision and from a relaxed distance he has been pursuing the multifaceted aspects of every day life since the late 1970s. Unobtrusively he tries to document those facets of life which seem too trivial to excite our attention but in their totality make up what we experience as reality: the atmosphere of Vienna, the specific lifestyle of this city, moments of this conglomeration which cannot be comprehended in the abstract – a world which for generations and through the most various traditions and trends has been perpetually reforming.
“Werkschau IV” offers a sample of the most important works in this context and tries to give an overview of his immense ouevre from 1977 onwards. […] -
28. January 1998 — 28. February 1998
i have nothing to say
for nothing
that would be outside or inside me could not be expanded
nor placed into the frame of (my) context
exploded streams of energy as interfaces of human-kinds
that touch the edges of the body’s fragments in the loss
of heat the surfaces of life wounded into a burnt out
of the bodies as asylum enclosed the labyrinth of mourning
into the black echo of the tears
the i leaves behind
a nomad between the final limits coldness/life-heat/deathVALIE EXPORT, 1983
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WERKSCHAU II – MANFRED WILLMANN
5. February 1997 — 1. March 1997
My theme is man and his life, nature. Sometimes I work on everything at once, sometimes on one subject more precisely: to get particularly close to the physical existence. The reference to nature can not be drastic enough to show its sensitivity (transience). I, too, must protect myself from my vulnerability.
Every time knows its limits of the sayable. To reach the limit of what can be said, one must have the intention to do it. To have the pain and happiness of this world before one’s eyes and in one’s heart, to be able to say it, to develop feelings for things, to express them in a controlled and precise way. I still have to lose control; to get beyond the images already accepted in the moment. To be ahead of the time. To show things even more beautifully and perhaps even more ugly. […] -
8. February 1996 — 2. March 1996
Image Space Word Language Slip It started with the photo letters. Photography was always used in a complex way by Jana Wisniewski, artist and cultural journalist in the art context. The image messages (photo letters) combined photography with text passages, graphic elements and real objects e.g. envelopes. The images of collages or installations became images […]