A Baroque Party
Moments of Theatrum Mundi in Contemporary Art

In the first exhibition shown in its new great exhibition hall 1 in Vienna’s MuseumsQuartier, a cultural ensemble characteristically defined by J. B. Fischer von Erlach’s Baroque architecture, the Kunsthalle Wien will demonstrate that the 17th century has not only survived in historical facades, but also plays a special role in contemporary art.

Dinos and Jake Chapman, Wim Delvoye, Ulrike Grossarth, Yvonne Rainer, Sam Taylor-Wood, and Paul Thek throw a bridge between Baroque ideas and concepts and art-making positions of today. Dichotomies that are characteristic of the Baroque period can be found again in the exhibition which vacillates between allegory and realism, festivity and vanitas, eroticism and religion, between sacred and profane, represented by theatrical, rhetorical and illusionist artifice.