Rück - Blick

de Agnes Husslein-Arco, Harald Krejci, Axel Köhne

Almost 50 years ago, the Kinetika exhibition took place in the Schweizer Garten of the 20er Haus museum?upon the initiative of its director, Werner Hofmann. International artists showed their works in Vienna, which were generally described at the time as op or kinetic art. It was the age of artistic examinations of scientific research into the human perception, movement, and trans-media characteristics of art. The exhibition in Vienna included works by artists such as Josef Albers, Hartmut Boehm, Gianni Colombo, Toni Costa, Marcel Duchamp, Günther Fruhtrunk, Richard Paul Lohse, Heinz Mack, Francois Morellet, Jesus-Raphael Soto, Vasarely, and Ludwig Wilding - as well as the Austrian artists Marc Adrian, Richard Kriesche, and Helga Philipp. It was also a time when exhibitions gained international recognition, such as The Responsive Eye in New York, Trigon in Graz, and the Nouvelles Tendances in Zagreb, at the heart of which was a focus on the fundamental structures of art. The analytical approach to questions of structure, interval, series, as well as the incidental in art, literature, music, and film, was impeccably thematised in the Kinetika exhibition in Vienna in 1967. The references and questions asked by that historical exhibition are at the core of our show, which serves as an introduction to the simultaneous exhibition Abstract Loop Austria and foregrounds the international aspect of the Austrian concrete art of Marc Adrian, Richard Kriesche, and Helga Philipp, which was paid less attention at that time. Hauptwerke der konkreten Kunst und der Opt-Art waren in Wien 1967 in der von Werner Hofman kuratierten Ausstellung "Kinetika" im 20er Haus zu sehen, die nun teilweise rekonstruiert und mit einem Katalog neu beleuchtet wird. Exhibition: 21er Haus, Vienna, Austria (27.04.-28.08.2016).