SALZBURG.- The collection of the Museum der Moderne Salzburg, the Austrian Federal Photography Collection, and especially the Generali Foundation Collection include numerous works by international artists—well-known treasures as well as others that have never been on public display or await rediscovery—that probe the creative potential of language as well as its role in defining society and engendering reality. The exhibition presents graphic work, collages, and publications that mix and match written language and imagery together with audio plays, objects, and installations that examine the interrelations between language and art, poetry, politics, discrimination, or questions of gender. “The power of language is evident in our daily lives. The way we speak—the words and metaphors we use, our native dialects, and many other characteristics— shapes our thoughts and actions. The issues the exhibition explores are especially relevant today, as lies are justified as ‘alternative facts’ and people dismiss reports that do not agree with their worldviews as ‘fake news,’” Antonia Lotz, Generali Foundation Collection Curator, explains. Power of Language is already the tenth exhibition in a series of thematic presentations at the Museum der Moderne Salzburg realized in partnership with the Generali Foundation. “This impressively proves the success of the partnership with the Generali Foundation which has existed since 2014, and I am very pleased to continue on the path begun by Sabine Breitwieser and want to thank all those who contributed to the realization of the exhibition”, says Thorsten Sadowsky, Director Museum der Moderne Salzburg.

Created in the early nineteenth century, Francisco de Goya’s “Los Proverbios / Los Disparates” are among the oldest examples of the conjunction of image and text and the visualization of language in art in the Museum der Moderne Salzburg’s collection. In the writer Stéphane Mallarmé’s Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hasard (1897), the presentation also includes an early work that conversely assimilates text to graphic art. His creative typography introduces the significance of the visual register into literature and remains a key inspiration for numerous visual artists working today, as a rich selection of works from the Generali Foundation Collection illustrates. The dialogue between image and text intensifies in the early twentieth century. Language becomes an integral part of visual art on the levels of form and content. Words, fragments of words, and entire texts appear in pictures and collages with increasing frequency. In the concrete poetry of the 1950s, language is treated as a kind of physical material; during the next two decades, conceptual art, in works that instantiate ideas, relies on language as the central medium of creative articulation. Marking a turning point in the history of art, these tendencies usher in a radically different engagement with language that still informs the—critical and formalist, poetic and playful—reflections on language in the works of today’s artists.

With works by Christian Ludwig Attersee (1940 Pressburg, SK – Vienna, AT), Robert Barry (1936 New York, NY, US − Teaneck, NJ, US), Josef Bauer (1934 Wels, AT), Lothar Baumgarten (1944 Rheinsberg, DE – Berlin, DE), Konrad Bayer (1932 – 1964 Vienna, AT), Marcel Broodthaers (1924 Brussels, BE – 1976 Cologne, DE), Günter Brus (1938 Ardning, AT – Graz, AT), Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (1951 Busan, KR – 1982 New York, NY, US), Lovis Corinth (1858 Tapiau, former Eastern Prussia, today RU – 1925 Zandvoort, NL), Verena Dengler (1981 Vienna, AT), Peter Downsbrough (1940 New Brunswick, NJ, US – Brussels, BE), Heinrich Dunst (1955 Hallein, AT – Vienna, AT), VALIE EXPORT (1940 Linz, AT – Vienna, AT), Rainer Ganahl (1961 Bludenz, AT – New York, NY, US), Heinz Gappmayr (1925 – 2010 Innsbruck, AT), Francisco de Goya (1746 Aragón, ES – 1828 Bordeaux, FR), Jarosław Kozłowski (1945 Poznan, PL), David Lamelas (1946 Buenos Aires, AR – New York, NY, US, and Brussels, BE), Else Lasker-Schüler (1869 Elberfeld, today Wuppertal, DE – 1945 Jerusalem, IL), Stéphane Mallarmé (1842 Paris, FR – 1898 Valvins, FR), Wendelien van Oldenborgh (1962 Rotterdam, NL), Ewa Partum (1945 Grodzisk Mazowiecki, PL – Berlin, DE), Arnulf Rainer (1929 Baden bei Wien, AT – Enzenkirchen, AT), Gerhard Rühm (1930 Vienna, AT – Vienna, AT, and Cologne, DE), Ashley Hans Scheirl (1956 Salzburg, AT – Vienna, AT), Klaus Scherübel (1968 Bruck an der Mur, AT – Montreal, CA), Ferdinand Schmatz (1953 Korneuburg, AT – Vienna, AT), Kurt Schwitters (1887 Hannover, DE – 1948 Kendal, GB), Dominik Steiger (1940 – 2014 Vienna, AT), Andrea van der Straeten (1953 Trier, DE – Vienna, AT), Richard Teschner (1879 Karlsbad, former Austria-Hungary, today CZ – 1948 Vienna, AT), Ana Torfs (1963 Mortsel, BE – Brussels, BE), Goran Trbuljak (1948 Varazdin, HR – Zagreb, HR), Joëlle Tuerlinckx (1958 Brussels, BE), Timm Ulrichs (1940 Berlin, DE), Ian Wallace (1943 Shoreham, GB – Vancouver, CA), Oswald Wiener (1935 Vienna, AT), Heimo Zobernig (1958 Mauthen, AT – Vienna, AT)

Curators: Antonia Lotz, Generali Foundation Collection Curator, with Marijana Schneider, Curatorial Assistant