True Romance

Exhibition
5/10 2007 — 3/2 2008
Museumsquartier / Halle1

“True Romance” is the Kunsthalle Wien’s big autumn exhibition in the general theme of LOVE, DEATH and TRAUMA.

The joint project with the Kunsthalle zu Kiel and the Museum Villa Stuck, Munich will celebrate its “premiere” in autumn with the opening at the Kunsthalle Wien.
In addition to major contemporary artists such as Marina Abramovic, Tracey Emin, VALIE EXPORT, Nan Goldin, Martin Kippenberger, Jean-Jacques Lebel, Cy Twombly (and many more) works byGiorgione, Pieter de Hooch, Gustav Klimt, Adriaen van der Werff, and others can be seen.

When we speak of love, we immediately activate a flood of images in our minds. We think of passionate reverence and hardened feelings, of the heart that has frozen to ice or burst into flames. Emotions range from feeling on the top of the world to a sense of morbid gloom. These readily available metaphors of love are not inventions of the advertising and film industries. Their roots reach far back to the beginnings of modern Western culture.
The exhibition True Romance traces how this “great emotion” is articulated in the fine arts. The starting point is the Canzoniere of the early humanist Francesco Petrarca. The majority of the exhibition is modern, but the show attempts to draw parallels between historical topoi, such as the mythological personification of Amor and Venus, and contemporary art practice. The exhibition brings together paintings, videos, installations, sculptures, and drawings depicting people hugging, kissing, closely entwined, and getting married, celebrating the depth of great emotion, its frailty in symbolic and feasible failure. New ways of praising love range from intimate pictures culled directly from everyday life through to allegorical pieces that work with the virtuality of new media.

Curator: Belinda Grace Gardner, Hamburg
Curators, Kunsthalle Wien: Angela Stief, Gerald Matt

Scientific Comitée: Michael Buhrs (Museum Villa Stuck, Munich), Dirk Luckow (Kunsthalle zu Kiel), and Gerald Matt (Kunsthalle Wien)

“True Romance” is a project produced by the Kunsthalle zu Kiel and the Schleswig-Holstein Kunstverein in cooperation with Kunsthalle Wien and Museum Villa Stuck, Munich.

Further venues:

21 February, 2008 – 18 May, 2008
Museum Villa Stuck, Munich

31 May, 2008 – 9 September, 2008
Kunsthalle zu Kiel der Christian-Albrechts-Universität

Participating artists:

Marina Abramovic/Ulay, Carl André, David Armstrong, Richard Artschwager, Erwin Blumenfeld, Katia Bourdarel, Mark Boyle/Joan Hills, KP Brehmer, Birgit Brenner, Cecily Brown, Klaus vom Bruch, Sophie Calle/Gregory Shephard, Luis Camnitzer, Heinrich Campendonk, Chris Cunningham, Carola Dertnig, Jim Dine, Albrecht Dürer, Cecilia Edefalk, Nicole Eisenman, Tracey Emin, VALIE EXPORT, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Paolo Fiammingo, Katharina Fritsch, Barnaby Furnas, Giorgione, Nan Goldin, Félix Gonzáles-Torres, Douglas Gordon, Johannes Hammel, Joseph Heintz d. Ä., John Hilliard, Carsten Höller, Pieter de Hooch, Takahiko Iimura, Robert Indiana, Runa Islam, Christian Jankowski, Anna Jermolaewa, Allen Jones, Isaac Julien, Janice Kerbel, Martin Kippenberger, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Gustav Klimt, Max Klinger, Käthe Kollwitz, Jean-Jacques Lebel, Wilhelm Lehmbruck, Dora Maar, Ursula Mayer, Will McBride, Ryan McGinness, Tracey Moffatt, Mariko Mori, Mark Morrisroe, Kolo Moser, Mariella Mosler, Edvard Munch, Tim Noble/Sue Webster, Chris Ofili, Anna Oppermann, Parmigianino, Max Pechstein, Raymond Pettibon, Elizabeth Peyton, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Sigmar Polke, Elodie Pong, Richard Prince, Franz Radziwill, Mel Ramos, Lois Renner, Ulrike Rosenbach, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Michael Sailstorfer, Susanne Sander, Johann Nepomuk Schaller, Markus Schinwald, Christoph Schmidberger, Franz von Stuck, Ena Swansea, Johann Heinrich Tischbein d. Ä., Cy Twombly, Petrus Wandrey, Peter Weibel, Adriaen van der Werff, a.o.

Guided tours: every Sunday 3 pm