translated and summarized by: Liz Wollner-Grandville,
150713: HilgerBROTKunsthalle, Galerie Hilger NEXT Wien 10 - Cash, Cans & Candy
HilgerBROTKunsthalle, Galerie Hilger NEXT Wien 10
Cash, Cans & Candy
01.06.2013 – 14.09.2013
Subculture and mainstream
By Margareta Sandhofer
What started in Brooklyn and the Bronx in the subculture on the edge of legality with its provocative, often bright traces in public urban space, presents itself today in large galleries, auction houses, fairs, and museums across the globe – and is even considered an obligatory component of contemporary art. The spotlight from which the “sprayers” used to flee has long become their home. And: Street Art achieves breath-taking prices. The spectrum of its history is huge.
From the underground to the salon – even if it's a salon on the outskirts of Vienna and a continuous construction site, such as the HilgerBROTKunsthalle and GALERIE HILGER NEXT in Vienna’s 10th district. But the seemingly never-ending reconstruction in the former Anker bread factory is an appropriate location, offering a symbolic background for the development of Street Art. Renovation and revitalisation, and foremost occupying the existing substance and imparting it with new functions, values and ideals is the bustling, loud and dusty context in which Ernst Hilger embeds his exhibition “Cash, Cans & Candy”.
The Street Art presented here is in dynamic progress. The various trends have, in the meantime, developed their own dynamics, whose manifold facets cannot be clearly identified. The self-conception of the individual artists, their position in today’s art world and the works themselves have sometimes even abandoned the limits of Street Art.
The participation of stars as well as unknown artists (still) active in subculture in “Cash, Can & Candy” offers a stimulating mixture. Among the 50 artists are, to name but a few: Stinkfish, Dan Witz, ROA, Brian McKee, Laura Ortiz Vega, Vasilena Gankovska and El Pez.
Ernst Hilger’s remarkably acclaimed exhibition at should not blind us to the ambivalence of Street Art. It elucidates the pleasing, well-adjusted side, and is in stark contrast to the active scene in public space. Street Art artists are not only present in New York or other metropolises, but also in Vienna, in its underground tunnels or train stations, in their colourful continuously mutating diversity and contested aesthetics, anonymous, often driven by socio-political motivation and anarchist obsession. This, the other, the not civilized Street Art and graffiti scene is considered illegal, prosecuted for damage to property with spraying and punished with imprisonment. The exhibition at Hilger might be authentic; the scenario in the streets, in the tunnels and passages definitely is.
HilgerBROTKunsthalle
1100 Vienna, Absberggasse 27
Tel: +43-1-512 53 15/13
Fax: +43-1-512 53 15/32
email: brot@brotkunsthalle.com
http://www.brotkunsthalle.com
Opening hours: Thu - Sat 12-18 hours
Galerie Hilger NEXT Wien 10
1100 Vienna, Absberggase 27
Tel: +43 1 512 53 15
Fax: +43 1 513 91 26
email: ernst.hilger@hilger.at
http://www.hilger.at/
Opening hours: Wed - Sat 12 - 18 hours
150713
HilgerBROTKunsthalle
1100 Wien, Absberggasse 27
Tel: +43 1 512 5315 220, Fax: +43 1 603 0639
Email: brot@brotkunsthalle.com
http://www.brotkunsthalle.com
Öffnungszeiten: Di-Sa: 12-18h
HilgerBROTKunsthalle
1100 Wien, Absberggasse 27
Tel: +43 1 512 5315 220, Fax: +43 1 603 0639
Email: brot@brotkunsthalle.com
http://www.brotkunsthalle.com
Öffnungszeiten: Di-Sa: 12-18h