The Kunsthalle Wien, in cooperation with the Vienna Schauspielhaus theatre, is organising a workshop along with the exhibition “fact – fiction” by the Malaysian artist Wong Hoy Cheong, in which he deals, often in a humorous manner, with questions relating to cultural identities and cartographies. The parallel arrangement between the workshop and the exhibition highlights the processive and integrational character of Wong Hoy Cheong’s mode of operation, which the project space offers a suitable working and presentation platform for as an open window to the public.
The exhibition will emerge from a seven-day workshop that Wong Hoy Cheong is to conduct with twelve students from Vienna’s fine art schools, being held from
16 – 22 January 2003 at the showroom of the project space. Questions regarding the relationships between South East Asia and Europe will be compiled and discussed together with the students, and at the conclusion of the workshop a video work will be jointly realised by the students.
The exhibition features video films by the artist as well as a conversation between Wong Hoy Cheong and Gerald Matt, whose starting point will be the artist’s video installation “Re: Looking”, which is being shown as part of the stage project “Marco Polo Magic World” at the playhouse (to be premiered on 14. 1. 2003). A video work originated in Vienna specifically for the exhibition takes an ironic look at the identity-shaping power of iconic images in both Kuala Lumpur and Vienna: the dual towers of the Votivkirche church have their parallel in the Petrona Twin towers of Kuala Lumpur, while they “typical” Viennese kipferl is turned back into the Turkish half-moon crescent, to which it owes its shape.
Curator: Gerald Matt