After a long time in hiding I am now showing some of my photography at Haus Wittgenstein in Vienna. This is mainly portrait work, generally people I photographed over the last couple of decades. Opening monday, June 20th 2011 at 7 p.m. at 1030 Vienna, Parkgasse 18.

Meine Mutter / My mother, Wien / Vienna, 2011, Foto / Photo: Andreas Hirsch

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Tina Modotti, Photo: Johan Hagemeyer (c) Galerie Bilderwelt Berlin

The exhibition “TINA MODOTTI – Photographer and Revolutionary”, which I had the honour of curating (together with Reinhard Schultz) is  on show at the KUNST HAUS WIEN until November 7th 2010. Modotti (1896 – 1942) created her photographic oevre mainly within 7 years spent in the Mexico of the 1920-ies. She became legendary for both her photographic sensibility and her involvement in the revolutionary movements of her time. The exhibition combines a retrospective of her work as photographer with documentation of her being part of the artistic-revolutionary subcultures in Mexico and Europe, her being close with artists like Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo or Edward Weston or writers like B. Traven or Pablo Neruda. We also produced a catalogue with essays in german and english.

The exhibition BADETAG KUNSTWAESCHE opened with a performance. Natascha Uccusic and Georg Hitsch (dasKabelwerk.at) documented the event, see the images on Flickr.

Ausstellung Badetag Kunstwäsche von coop.incontro

This is the first collective public project of the artist’s cooperative coop.incontro – titled BADETAG KUNSTWÄSCHE. A project for the kabelwerkARTspace, a gallery in the new quarter “Kabelwerk” in Vienna. Four members of coop.incontro present their works that all circle around the exhibition’s overall theme of “encounters”: Katja Uccusic-Indra showing her paintings from the last year, Alexandra Uccusic presenting recent paintings and drawings, Judith Nicolussi displaying her graphic works and collages. I am showing some photograpghy – 13 images from the series “Encounter Art” and two sets from the newly conceived project “The Alphabet of Photography”. The exhibition opens May 11 at 7 p.m. with a performance in which the exhibition setup is completed, with a certain reference to the setting of kabelwerkARTspace and everyday life of the inhabitants of this new neighbourhood. More info at coop.incontro

With the realization filtering in that investment banking has returned to normal, states have failed to properly regulate the financial system and the next breakdown being already prognosed while crisis effects will linger a while longer, the expression “So Sorry” may be understood to encompass humankind’s inability to learn from failure. Darwin’s nightmare in a different guise.

The gesture of Ai Weiwei titling his current exhibition at Haus der Kunst in Munich “So Sorry” relates his wonderfully analytical and precise works even more to the crisis context, i.e. the current state of affairs, than they are by themselves already a commentary to what is going on.

His injuries and their traces in the media sphere point to an ambiguous unity of art, media and politics and present the artist’s body as the ultimate adressee of the “So Sorry” expressed unhealthy unity of the governmental and financial agencies.

The animals are all around us, actually all the time. The wear felt or a skin of leaves. We might find some of them in the classical indexes of the animal kingdom, but most of them we would seek there in vain.

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