Unterspiel

Unterspiel is an exhibition of five contemporary Viennese artists/artist groups, addressing a variety of artistic strategies of contemporary art production in Vienna. The exhibited works have a specific, sometimes belated, relation to a tradition of avant-gardism that has its origins in fin de siecle Vienna. At the same time these artists are paradoxically rooted in the provocative actions of the Viennese Actionists. In the wake of the Actionists' political work, contemporary Viennese art often engages in socio-political issues, whether around notions of Austrian identity, or in confrontation to political or art institutions.

Severin Hofmann & Patrick Baumiiller: This artist duo will interact with the public in their site-specific Würstelstand outside the gallery. Through performance, cultural reflection and the distribution of sausages this work experiments with notions of “cultural difference'' directly with the public.

Catrin Bolt & Marlene Haring: This former artist duo will present individual work that follows on their collaborative work, politically provocative, such as the 2003 video, Call Boys.

monochrom: Volunteers are invited to be buried alive. With a small, private graveyard set up in the gallery, willing individuals may come to experience their own mortality. Their project for Unterspiel is part of their Experience tour through the US and Canada.

Hans Schabus: Schabus, who represents Austria at this year's Venice Biennale, will present the video installation Western, in which the artist boats through the famous catacomb sewers beneath Vienna, the same place where Orson Wells ran from the authorities in the 1949 film The Third Man.

This exhibition is curated and organized by Seamus Kealy, a candidate in the Curatorial Program at UBC, and is a co-production of the Contemporary Art Gallery and the University of British Columbia.

Co-produced by the Contemporary Art Gallery and the University of British Columbia

The exhibition was made possible with core support.from the Austrian Federal Chancellery Kunst Program; the Austrian Foreign Ministry and the Austrian Cultural Forum in Ottawa, and with the generous support of the Austrian Consulate in Vancouver; he Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory, The University of British Columbia; The Alvin Balkind Fund; the Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery; Faculty of Graduate Studies, the University of British Columbia; Red Bull; E.T.T. European Technology Transfer Inc..