The Kunsthaus Bregenz (the "KUB") ~ Outstanding Exhibition Spaces for Contemporary Art In Austria ~ Is Toured By AKN Editor

Written by Holly Singleton Wednesday, 25 April 2012 22:14

In August 1993 the district administration office of Bregenz issued the building permit for the construction of a new art museum. Planning and negotiation had begun some years before, and construction started the following year. Both the museum itself and adjacent administration building were designed by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor a Pritzker Prize winner. The Kunsthaus Bregenz ( the KUB) was opened on July 25, 1997. The architect described the building as: "The art museum stands in the light of Lake Constance. It is made of glass and steel and a cast concrete stone mass which endows the interior of the building with texture and spatial composition. From the outside, the building looks like a lamp. It absorbs the changing light of the sky, the haze of the lake, it reflects light and colour and gives an intimation of its inner life according to the angle of vision, the daylight and the weather." Within the Urban Context The Kunsthaus Bregenz was built as a solitary construction in a prominent location not far from the lakefront bank. It filled the space on "Seestraße" between the Theater for Vorarlberg and the main post office. Fresh air is conducted through a gap between the floor and the outer walls to the halls. The used air is sucked in through the gaps between the sheets of glass of the light ceiling and flows out through this space, requiring no mechanical air conditioning. The entrance lies on the eastern side of the building facing the town. The administration building, situated in front of the museum towards the city centre, acts as a transitional structure to the smaller and low buildings of the old part of the town. All functional facilities of the Kunsthaus other than those directly associated with the presentation of art are housed separately in this smaller building, which accommodates a library, the museum shop and a café besides the administrative offices. The striking facade consists of etched glass shingles that lend the building lightness and transparency, provide insulation and form an essential part of the lighting arrangement for the building. The refractive properties of the glass shingles and a 90-centimetre wide light pit between the glass cladding and the concrete structure of the building proper makes it possible to direct daylight to the first subterranean level and illuminate the building at night. Three exhibition floors are used to exhibit the museum's own collection and featured thematic or solo artist exhibitions. As a new institution, the Kunsthaus' own collection is still very young, but focuses on contemporary Austrian art The collection begins in the 1980s with works by the younger generation of artists which broke away from the determining traditions of postwar Austrian art in favor of a more international orientation (for example Bohatsch, Brandl, Kogler, Kopf, F. Pichler, Rockenschaub, Scheibl, Schmalix, Ströhle, Türtscher, West, Wurm, Zobernig, among others). Acquisitions of groups of works by the most important artists set focal points. In parallel to these exhibitions, the KUB Arena’s program examines examples of differing forms of curatorial practice (such as the current Antony Gormley installation in the high Alps). Visit the museum's website at : www.kunsthaus-bregenz.at

Currently, the Kunsthaus are showing three exhibitions. Haegue Yang's "Arrivals" runs until 4th March 2011 and features both the artist's older work as well as 33 new light sculptures, which enigmatically populate the third floor like alien life-forms and her largest installation to date, specifically for the Bregenz show, consisting of approximately 200 aluminum venetian blinds, which occupy KUB’s entire second floor with an impressive weightlessness. These complex installations, sculptures, objects, photographs, videos, and slide projections, which in their atmospheric intensity appear equally poetic and conceptual, negate any unequivocal interpretation. Haegue Yang’s work captivates precisely because of its ambiguity, which is rooted as much in the conceptual art of the 1960s and 1970s, as in an engagement with current theoretical discourses. Also 'Living Archives' - Cooperation Van Abbemusem (which runs until 4th March 2011) explores artistic archives. What is an archive? What is a collection? What are the relationships between the documents stored in archives and objects stored in collections concerned with memory, identity, history, and politics? The collaboration with the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven is a joint consideration of the significance of archives and collections, which play a major role in the current reconsiderations of artistic practices and conservations in the realm of the museum. Alongside the exhibit Living Archive – Mixed Messages of the Van Abbemuseum, which includes works by Francis Bacon, Robert Indiana and Paul McCarthy, works by Michal Heiman, Hannah Hurtzig (both from the collection of the Van Abbemuseum) and Katrin Mayer offer a range of processual and amenable strategies of collecting and archiving. Meanwhile, for the more adventurous visitor, The KUB Arena presents Antony Gormley's "Horizon Field" which can be found in the High Alps of Vorarlberg, a short journey from Bregenz. The Kunsthaus Bregenz and the British artist Antony Gormley (born in 1950) realized a unique project in the mountains of Vorarlberg. Horizon Field is the first art project of its kind erected in the mountains and the largest landscape intervention in Austria to date. Horizon Field consists of 100 life-size, solid cast iron figures of the human body spread over an area of 150 square kilometers. The work forms a horizontal line at 2,039 meters above sea level. This height has no specific metaphorical or thematic relevance in the placement of the figures. It is an altitude that is readily accessible but, at the same time, lies beyond the realm of everyday life. Some of the figures are installed in places one can hike to or ski past in the winter. Others are unapproachable though visible from certain vantage points. The works are neither representations (statues) nor symbols, but represent the place where a human being once was, and where any human being could be. Horizon Field engages the physical, perceptual, and imaginative responses of anyone coming within its relational field. Over the 2 years during which this installation is in place, the work will be exposed to the elements, to different lighting conditions, and to the changing seasons, thus enabling constantly new perceptions and impressions.