Viewing the Other

Many contemporary artists have rediscovered the magic of the material. They work with materials that are generally allocated to the crafts, to the functional, or to decoration. They value the immediacy and haptic qualities of the material, the physical and emotional effect on the viewer and the historic, intellectual, and spiritual meanings. “The appreciation of the material glass has increased significantly in contemporary art,” says Dr. Eva-Maria Fahrner-Tutsek, chairwoman of the foundation. She wanted to dedicate an exhibition to this phenomenon and brought together significant works by renowned international artists.

What aspects of glass fascinate artists who come primarily from painting such as Alejandra Seeber, or those who work with bronze, marble, or wood such as Tony Cragg, or with video such as Mona Hatoum and photography such as Raimund Kummer? Is it the play of light inherent to glass; its reflections, fragility, and translucency, its technical possibilites, tradition and history, its narrative quality? With these questions the exhibition Viewing the Other also contributed to the discourse on glass in contemporary art.

The selected works by seven artists were all pieces of exceptional quality and cultural significance. As different as they may be, the thirteen works came together as a narrative: The Speech Bubbles (2014) floating in space by the Argentinian artist Alejandra Seeber (b. 1968), Gespräch unter drei Augen (1990) by Raimund Kummer (b. 1954), or the couple of Listeners (2015) made by the British artist Tony Cragg (b. 1949); the wall piece Glass Feathers (2015) by the Korean artist Ki-Ra Kim (b. 1959), Korb V (2014) with two red cell-shaped vessels by the London-based, Palestinian artist Mona Hatoum (b. 1952); Ashen (2010) by the New York artist Kiki Smith (b. 1954) in which glass flowers grow from a wooden sculpture resembling a coffin, or Overserved (2017), a wall built of reflecting deep-blue glass bricks by Pae White (b. 1963).

The installations created a poetics of space. They transform the house of the foundation, an Art Nouveau villa and once a sculptor’s studio, into a space that drew the viewer into contemplation and reflection.