SALZBURG.- After the inaugural and exceptionally successful presentation of selected works from the newly acquired Generali Foundation Collection, the second show in this rotating series with works from the collections sets the stage for inspiring encounters between our various holdings. The museum’s director Sabine Breitwieser and modern art curator Beatrice von Bormann have embarked on a research of artworks related to Systems & Subjects that ranges from the early twentieth century to the present. In their selection of works, the two curators present a thematically focused dialogue between the various holdings: the Generali Foundation, the collection of prints, MAP, and recent acquisitions. This collection exhibition features works by artists such as Max Beckmann, George Grosz, and Max Klinger in interaction with works by Bruno Gironcoli, Harun Farocki, Hans Haacke, Mary Kelly, Július Koller, Anna Oppermann, Allan Sekula, Franz West, Heimo Zobernig, and others.

A selection from the collection of prints illuminates the origins of the museum, which was founded in 1983 based on a donation by the art dealer Friedrich Welz. A wide gulf, and not just of time, sets these works apart from the newly acquired Generali Foundation Collection and works by Lynn Hershman Leeson and Andreas Siekmann that have generously been donated to the museum this year. Works of classical modernism in which the image of the human being is at the center are juxtaposed with conceptual approaches in art. In these works created between the 1960s and the present—the great majority are installations—physical, economic, and social systems frame the engagement with the subject.

The show opens with Hans Haacke’s Circulation (1969), an expansive installation that consists of a network of hoses through which water is being pumped. Before Haacke turned to the critical study of economic and political systems in works that have repeatedly sparked controversial debates, he experimented with real-time systems ranging from closed physical setups involving water in different aggregate states (his well-known Condensation Cube was on display in the previous exhibition) to biological systems. In the 1960s, Conceptual art was often declared to be ‘dematerialized’; Robert Barry scrutinized the economic networks of the art market in his celebrated Invitation Piece (1972–1973), an exhibition project in which each invitation from one prominent avant-garde gallery directed the audience to another; the final piece consists of the roundelay of invitation cards installed in a circle. Maria Eichhorn has examined financial systems in several projects—in one, for the Kunsthalle Bern, she even replaced the popular format of the artist’s edition with shares she issued. The Polish artist Edward Krasiński initiated an artistic system of marking the real environment in 1968 by sticking horizontal strips of blue Scotch tape—it became his signature material—on the members of his family, buildings, and even his own artworks at the uniform height of 130 centimeters. Heimo Zobernig’s five-part installation Ohne Titel (1991) was created for his show in the Generali Foundation’s first space in downtown Vienna. Its sculptural articulation is reminiscent of bar tables, raising questions about the tension between functionality and autonomy in art, but also about the promotion of systems of social interaction. The Argentinean artist David Lamelas’s film and photography installation Gente di Milano (1970) shows passersby shot from fixed locations in front of Milan’s famous shopping arcade. The exhibition confronts his urbanites with the grotesque portrayal of burghers in George Grosz’s Ecce Homo (1923). Max Beckmann’s graphic cycle Faces (1919) attests to the artist’s private experiences, but also to his need to make a living after World War I by selling print editions. The examination of the private sphere in the matrix of economic processes returns in two icons of feminist art: Mary Kelly’s film Antepartum (1973) and her installation Post-Partum Document (1974), which injected the body and personal and psychological issues into Conceptual art, a major provocation to the male artists who dominated the field (and set its themes) at the time. For evidence of how political the personal can be, consider the response that Kelly’s montage of her infant’s diapers and feeding charts while weaning the child elicited when it was first displayed in London: “Is This Art?” a headline asked.

The exhibition’s exploration of the sphere of (ostensibly) private life continues with Franz West’s pornographic reveries Dreamy (1997), painted magazine pages combined with one of his daybed sculptures first exhibited at the Kunsthistorisches Museum. Max Klinger’s graphic series Ein Handschuh (A Glove, 1880–1881) enters into a dialogue with Bruno Gironcoli’s no less fetishistic installation Schuhe (Shoes, 1970–1971), which features aluminum casts of mundane objects from the artist’s private sphere. Anna Oppermann’s Spiegelensemble (Mirror Ensemble, 1968–1989), an unparalleled immersive installation, blends subjective reality and its poetic transfiguration through the detail seen in the mirror—a transformed perception of reality based on a methodology the artist developed for her series of ensembles. Working in a socialist system, the Bratislava-based artist Július Koller undertook a similar interrogation of reality in his series Anti-Happening (1963–1971) by declaring everyday actions and objects to be art; his self-portrayals as the U.F.O.-naut J.K. (1970–2005) evince his sense of humor bordering on slapstick. With famously dry and caustic wit, Martha Rosler highlights the ways in which the constraints of hegemonic economic systems serve to exploit disadvantaged groups, showing how food, for example, functions as a marker of social class. The exhibition includes several of her “postcard novels,” which she disseminated, card by card, as Mail art.

Several of the works on display in the show take up entire rooms, including two installations by the Los Angeles-based living artist Morgan Fisher, each of which will be shown for a three-month period during the exhibition. Allan Sekula’s audio and photography installation Aerospace Folktales (1973) illustrates how his father’s loss of his job in the aviation industry affected the entire family and life at home. Anette Baldauf and Dorit Margreiter’s video The She Zone (2004) examines issues around gender and the body in the context of globalization; structured like a slide-showbased travelogue, it is set in the geographic and social space of an Abu Dhabi shopping mall. Andreas Siekmann’s Gespensterökonomie (Spectre of economy, 2001), an installation donated to the Museum der Moderne Salzburg by an American collector that will be on public display for the first time, lends playful expression to a critique of the neoliberal economic order. It will be presented in one gallery with Mein Vorurteil gegen diese Zeit (My Prejudice against This Time, 1927–1931) a series of caricatures in which Karl Rössing pinpoints contemporary abuses. The strand of social critique continues with a work by Lynn Hershman Leeson donated by the artist. Her celebrated film !Women Art Revolution (2011) shows how the feminist art movement has transformed the art and culture of our time. After screenings all over the world that inspired lively debate, the film now makes its long-awaited Austrian premiere. The exhibition concludes with the eleven-part video installation Arbeiter verlassen die Fabrik in elf Dekaden (Workers Leaving the Factory in Eleven Decades, 1995/2006) by the artist Harun Farocki, who died unexpectedly this summer, an important work that reflects on the overarching theme of Systems & Subjects from the particular angle of the film industry.

Artists included in the exhibition: Robert Barry, Max Beckmann, Maria Eichhorn, Harun Farocki, Morgan Fisher, Bruno Gironcoli, George Grosz, Hans Haacke, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Mary Kelly, Anselm Kiefer, Max Klinger, Július Koller, Edward Krasiński/ Eustachy Kossakowski, David Lamelas, Dorit Margreiter/Anette Baldauf, Anna Oppermann, Karl Rössing, Martha Rosler, Allan Sekula, Andreas Siekmann, Franz West, Stephen Willats, and Heimo Zobernig.