Poetic installation by Claire Morgan and group exhibition for Adolf Frohner’s 90th birthday
Krems (OTS) – Two new exhibitions are starting this weekend on the Krems Art Mile. The Landesgalerie Niederösterreich is presenting the impressive work of the Irish artist Claire Morgan for the first time in Austria. The Forum Frohner, a five-minute walk from the Landesgalerie, is honoring the artist Adolf Frohner, who died in 2007, on his 90th birthday with a group exhibition on his sphere of activity as a teacher.
WALK-IN INSTALLATION
For three years, the ground floor of the Landesgalerie Niederösterreich has functioned as a window to international art. Here, artists are invited to develop large installations specifically for this space, which enter into a dialogue with the architecture of the museum and the surrounding area. In 2024, the Irish artist Claire Morgan (*1980) designed a new, expansive gesture for the Landesgalerie. In her art, Morgan raises fundamental questions about the role of humans and their relationship to nature. Her fragile, mostly hanging installations reflect the artist’s interest in natural processes and organic materials.
“With Claire Morgan we present an extremely exciting artist who occupies a unique position in the international contemporary art scene. With her outstanding feeling for special materials, she created an impressive installation in Krems that she created especially for the Landesgalerie.”
says Gerda Ridler, curator and artistic director of the Landesgalerie Niederösterreich.
In the installation “Hold me tightly read I fall” different colored plastic scraps, fine thistle seeds and bird feathers hang from the ceiling of the exhibition room on around 4,500 transparent nylon threads. They form two corridors that intersect in the middle. At the intersection, a human figure in the form of a wax sculpture appears to float in the middle of the material. Ten taxidermied birds enliven the corridors. The work can be understood as a subtle, poetic plea to reflect on human intervention in nature and its progressive destruction.
ADOLF FROHNER’S CIRCLE OF ACTION AS A TEACHER
Adolf Frohner (1934 – 2007) is one of the most important Austrian artists of post-war modernism. He is known as a co-founder of Viennese Actionism and for his expressive painting and drawing. Frohner worked as a professor at the college (later university) of applied arts for many years and took over the master class for painting in 1985. He himself was self-taught and only attended Herbert Boeckl’s famous evening act at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. On the occasion of his 90th birthday, the Forum Frohner looks at his work as a teacher.
“As a master class teacher, Adolf Frohner had a formative influence on the young generation of artists, especially in the 1980s and early 90s. With the presentation of Frohner’s students of this time, we make development trends in Austrian art history visible.”
emphasizes Elisabeth Voggeneder, curator and artistic director of Forum Frohner.
The exhibition “Dialogues” shows works by artists who studied in Adolf Frohner’s master class in the 1980s and early 1990s and who have connections to Frohner’s artistic position. In these decades, the gesture of painting, the color itself and the relationship to what is seen are the focus of art. Frohner’s preference for the figure is reflected in the expressive painterly works of Nina Maron, Saša Makarová, Sylvia K. Kummer and Lisa Kunit. Frohner’s examination of the principle of the feminine becomes a topic of its own, especially for his students. In the comparison of an early work and a current work by these artists, continuities become visible, as do breaks and changes. At ONA B., an older geometric work on canvas is juxtaposed with her younger, colorfully flashy shoe objects. Experimentation with different techniques can be seen in Birgit Sauer’s work. Other exhibited artists such as Emi R. Denk, Harald Gfader and Nikolaus Moser are dedicated to painting itself.
With Frohner’s monumental painting “Van Gogh & Cézanne try to fly”, the show also shows a programmatic work by Adolf Frohner. Classical modernism and its important representatives represent the framework of his artistic and didactic position.
CLAIRE MORGAN. HOLD ME TIGHTLY LEST I FALL
25.05.2024 – 02.03.2025
Lower Austria State Gallery, Museumsplatz 1, 3500 Krems
Press area
Press photos
Opening: Fri, May 24, 2024, 6:00 p.m
Photos of the opening (online on May 24th, 2024 from 9 p.m.):
https://www.apa-fotoservice.at/galerie/35853
DIALOGUES
25.05. – 20.10.2024
Forum Frohner, Minoritenplatz 4, 3500 Krems-Stein
Press area
Press photos
Opening: Sat, May 25, 2024, 11 a.m
Photos of the opening (online on May 25, 2024 from 3 p.m.):
https://www.apa-fotoservice.at/galerie/35849
Questions & Contact:
State Gallery of Lower Austria
Elisabeth Zettl
+43 664 60499 178
elisabeth.zettl@kunstmeile.at