AUSTRIAN TRASH AND SCRAP

Cur.: S.E.N.F.: Manfred Fuks, Andreas Kunzmann, Klaus Sinowatz

Austria lives on its beautiful landscapes and its rich past; Austria lives on its cliched picturebook-sceneries and its phoney myths, on its matron-like, permanently child-bearing emperess-bee Maria Theresia and its patriachal Emperor Franz Joseph I, slaughtering peoples and decorating coffee mugs. In this exhibition, S.E.N.F. intends to fragment Austrian iconology and to take the myths of Austrian everyday life apart by recontextualizing jokingly and ironically the Austrian picture canon. A polemic and slogan-like approach to this subject is intended. To take clichés apart and achieve this effect, only certain "shifts" within a visual or acoustic depiction are necessary. This exhibition will deal with the myths on the Austrian Habsburg Monarchy, the idylls of Austrian landscape depictions and the (bad) habits and rituals of the Austrian society.