Public Matters

by Fabrizio Mifsud Soler.

All photos: Johannes Stoll / Belvedere, Vienna

Is art a public matter? In its largest outdoor sculpture project to date, the Belvedere in Vienna, Austria is placing contemporary art in the spotlight to celebrate its 300 year anniversary.

Ever since their opening to the general public in the 1780s, the Belvedere Gardens have been used extensively as places for recreation and communality. The fact that they are clearly also places for art is highlighted by Public Matters during which works by thirty-three contemporary artists connect all the museum’s gardens. Alongside well-known artists such as Louise Bourgeois and Fritz Wotruba, the exhibition presents new site-specific works by Verena Dengler, Thomas Geiger, Iman Issa and Kateřina Šedá amongst several others. From the main courtyard of the Lower Belvedere to the grand Baroque gardens of the Upper Belvedere and the modernist sculpture garden of the Belvedere 21, sculptures permeate the environment making a bold statement.

Both site-specifically developed as well as already existing artworks reflect the full scope of what sculpture can be today. Performative, installative, process- and time-based works are displayed alongside traditional forms or sculpture, underlining the expanded concept of sculpture to which the exhibition refers.

Integrating these different artistic approaches in the historical setting of the Belvedere Gardens opens up fresh, critical perspectives on public forms of representing power and prestige through the ages. This is conveyed particularly vividly by the allusions of individual works to the historical structural and functional elements in the gardens. Art—as the various works lucidly demonstrate— always reflects the social conditions of its time.

True to the spirit of their original dedication, the grounds of the Belvedere will be permeated with art: radically current, surprising and site-specific, states Stella Rollig, General Director.

Participation and individual ways of experiencing art are central to the project. This is emphasised by free admission to the grounds thanks to which visitors can decide themselves when, how often, in which ways, and how extensively they engage with the works on display.

Luisa Ziaja, Chief Curator comments, The title Public Matters refers both to matters of public concern and to the social importance of the public sphere. Both readings are present in this exhibition: The works address current topics of today, such as ecology, migration, gender issues or world concepts. In the interplay between the historical ensemble and contemporary interventions, a place of negotiation, and thus ultimately a public sphere, is created both with and through art.