Richard Hawkins
Potentialities

Kunsthalle Wien presents a major survey of works by Richard Hawkins (b. 1961, Mexia, Texas), bringing together over 100 paintings, collages, sculpture and videos from nine distinct bodies of work produced over the last three decades. It is the first institutional exhibition of Hawkins’s work in over a decade and the first in Austria.

Since the early 1990s, Hawkins has developed a singular practice based upon the intense pleasure of looking and the dynamics of desire. Employing collage as a means to structure and develop his compositions, he has described his work as ‘promiscuously referential’, quoting from the histories of artistic representation in sculpture, painting, literature and the performing arts alongside popular culture.

The exhibition surveys a period that begins with meticulously annotated compositions of cut and pasted imagery and shows the breadth of Hawkins’s output, including ceramic reliefs, wallpapers and videos that allude to online subcultures and shared memes. The title Potentialities borrows an ancient concept from Western philosophy and science that describes any ‘possibility’ that a thing can be said to have.

The exhibition is accompanied by a new publication, the first on Richard Hawkins in over 15 years. It features essays by Rhea Anastas, Annie Ochmanek and Kristian Vistrup Madsen, as well as a conversation between Richard Hawkins and Bruce Hainley.

Richard Hawkins has created a limited edition print as part of a new series of artists’ editions. Purple Melody Vienna (2025) reproduces the 2018 painting Purple Melody included in the exhibition.

Trigger warning

The exhibition contains nudity, body horror and explicit sexual imagery.