VIENNA.-Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary presents OTHER THAN YOURSELF–An Investigation between Inner and Outer Space, on view February 8 until September 21, 2008. A group exhibition with works by Janet Cardiff, Maurizio Cattelan, Emanuel Danesch / David Rych, Michael Elmgreen / Ingar Dragset, Mario García Torres, Amos Gitai,Jonathan Horowitz, Sanja Iveković, Amar Kanwar, David Lamelas, Paul McCarthy, Boris Ondreicka, Sergio Prego, Pipilotti Rist, Hans Schabus, Gregor Schneider, Cindy Sherman, Roman Signer, Monika Sosnowska, Salla Tykkä, Slaven Tolj.

Other than Yourself–An Investigation between Inner and Outer Space presents a range of works, mostly drawn from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary collection, that reference either the immediate space that surrounds or serves the artists’ actions and experimentation or the space that unfolds through the artwork itself. These particular spaces allow for an examination of how various spatial orders are constructed along a shifting scale from intimate (body), to private (home), to interpersonal (social), to material/institutional (economic, political, cultural)—all based on an interdependent notion of the self.

The personal space provides us with a location in the world, by marking a barrier that distinguishes and can protect the individual from the outside world. Privacy can represent a disengagement from others, a nonrelatedness, but also rests upon the paradox that this space is provided by the recognition of others (audience, viewer). It is part of a person’s repertoire of communicative measures that have the potential of expressing and protecting an individual’s personal boundaries. It marks a flexible potential space that allows for the creation of shared realities—that belong neither to the self nor to the other. Space in this context is understood as practice.

Other than Yourself–An Investigation between Inner and Outer Space introduces and juxtaposes diverse ways of using, unfolding or dealing with privacy/intimacy by contextualizing and addressing parameters such as specific times, sites, events and topics, thereby retracing an open and fragmented history of the private/intimate and its multilayered shifts in recent artistic practice.

With this exhibition Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary is setting forth its investigations introduced in earlier projects Küba: Journey Against the Current (2006) and Shooting Back (2007), continuing the foundations approach towards a more direct engagement with socio-political issues, exploring diversely coded cultural identities by the means and multiple expressions art allows for. While continuously expanding its collection since 2002, the foundation also enlarged its sphere of reach, strengthening a sense of responsibility through constant self-reflection and the exploration of curatorial practice. The collection reflects upon the collector, and through the various experimental projects, in which art investigates its own space, it simultaneously reinvestigates its context of collecting, and its potential of strengthening a commitment to change.