Vienna, Austria - The highlight of fall 2008 will be a major exhibition : “With Western Motel. Edward Hopper and Contemporary Art, we will present one of the most important representatives of American twentieth century art in Austria for the first time,” says Director Gerald Matt, of Kunstalle Wein. Edward Hopper’s works continue to describe the state of today’s world, his cinematographic view providing the starting point for narrative inventions and imaginations in space and time. On exhibition 3 October 2008 through 15 February 2009.

Only very few artists have depicted the nature of human existence as impressively as Edward Hopper (1882 –1967) did. The American painter developed a pictorial language that extended and reformulated the aesthetics of American realism in the wake of modernism regardless of the crucial developments of his time such as Pop Art and Abstract Expressionism. His pictures “deal with America not only on the surface, but dig deep into the American dream, radically examining this profoundly American dilemma of appearances and reality” ( Wim Wenders ).

Hopper’s spatial constructions irritate the viewer and their natural understanding of space; they renounce Alberti’s famous view through a window through surreal light conditions and shadows, as well as unreal perspectives, and unfold a realism that is fragile and again and again reveals tendencies towards abstraction and a geometrization of the pictorial surface. Hopper’s psychologically charged interior and exterior spaces seem to merge, and we repeatedly come upon threshold motifs such as windows, balconies, and doors. Spatial boundaries blur and are accentuated at the same time. In their prototypical representation, Hopper’s figures make us think of the manichini of the Pittura metafisica, they have almost no individual features and strike us as isolated, cut off from others, melancholy, and introverted.

Edward Hopper once remarked, “To me, the important thing is the sense of going on. You know how beautiful things are when you’re travelling.” Travelling provided Hopper with the subjects for his pictures, which were also a source of inspiration. Movement and standstill are two cornerstones of his art. He loved the cinema, and the cinema loved him. The filmic as such is crucial for his works because the static character of his paintings conveys itself as an indefinitely expanded instantaneous exposure that can only be explained through movement. The transformation of time into space is as key as the transformation of space into time. With this approach, Edward Hopper inspired not only a wide range of film makers like Alfred Hitchcock, Ridley Scott, and Wim Wenders, but also sculptors, photographers, video artists, and writers such as Peter Handke and Paul Auster.

Presenting a selection of paintings, etchings, and drawings, the exhibition aims at elucidating the manifold connections between Hopper and contemporary art. The selection of contemporary artworks has been oriented toward principles of composition rather than related motifs or Hopper quotes. Provisional list of artists: David Claerbout, Dawn Clements, Jonas Dahlberg, Thomas Demand, Gustav Deutsch,Tim Eitel, Jim Jarmusch, Rachel Khedoori, Mark Lewis, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Ed Ruscha, Markus Schinwald, Jeff Wall, Rachel Whiteread.

Since 1992, more than one million visitors have seen exhibitions at the Kunsthalle Wien. 70 exhibitions presented almost 10,000 works by more than 1,000 different artists, which makes the Kunsthalle Wien one of the best-frequented, but also one of the most active exhibition venues for contemporary art in Europe.

Visit Kunstalle Wein - Museumsplatz 1, 1070 Vienna, Austria - www.kunsthallewien.at