Peter Kogler in the Francisco Carolinum Linz

For the exhibition Alphabet City The artist’s photo archive serves as a starting point. The photographs were taken in 1985, during a stay in New York – a time that significantly shaped Kogler’s further artistic development. With his Minox camera, he documented the urban environment, but also the pulsating art and music scene of the city in a moment of profound social and technological upheavals.

The exhibition interweaves these early photographic recordings with spacious wallpaper installations and puts both the media conditions of the 1980s and their current readability for discussion. The focus is on the original cardboard pieces from its exhibition in the Galerie Gracie Mansion in the East Village. The show is supplemented by works that were created before 1985, as well as works that were then developed under the influence of its time in the United States.

Personal memories of encounters with artists such as Donald Baechler or David Wojnarowicz as well as impressions from clubs such as the danceteria or the palladium flow as a documentary subtext in the showcases. They are supplemented with artifacts from this time, such as: B. the magazine East Village Eye.

In this exciting overlay of archive material, patterns and media reflection, Kogler’s work can be experienced as a continuous dialogue between analog memories and digital construction.

On November 29, 2025, exactly 40 years after the opening of the exhibition in New York, the catalog is presented. In a joint interview, Peter Kogler, Wolfgang Kos and Edek Bartz remember a time that forms for them: the early 1980s in New York-an artistic environment in which visual art, music and subcultural scenes merged in a unique way.

Also new to see in the Francisco Carolinum Linz are the exhibitions CLAUDIA HART. Patterns and Politics and BETWEEN CODE AND CARE: Flynn´s Portrait of Human Connections.