For the 2024 edtion of STAGE Bregenz the curators Fiammetta Griccioli and Elise Lammer have each curated a section featuring solo presentations while Verena Kaspar-Eisert curated a special photographic exhibition and Matylda Krzykowski a programme entitled STAGE Treff. Krzykowski also staged the entrance area and foyer with inventory from the Festspielhaus: Ballet mirrors, make-up tables and spotlights.

Section: INTERPLAY
Curator: Elise Lammer

Galerie Krinzinger, AT (Andreas Werner)
OFFICE IMPART, DE (Hannah Sophie Dunkelberg)
Zeller van Almsick, AT (Bianca Phos)
Kirchgasse Gallery, CH (Cédric Eisenring)
Windhager von Kaenel, CH (Niels Trannois)
Efremidis, DE (Aura Rosenberg)
Castiglioni Fine Arts, IT (Giulio Bonfante)
Galleria Doris Ghetta, IT (Sophie Hirsch)
Galerie am Lindenplatz, LI (Martina Morger)

There is something unsettling and, at the same time, deeply satisfying about the possibility of sneaking into an opera house outside of performance hours. Walking up and down the tiers of the main stage, lingering through the many backstage rooms, and roaming around the halls may produce a sense of transgression and freedom that accompanies the viewer throughout their visit. Every corner oozes theatricality within a building that was engineered to see and be seen. This unique feature was crucial when conceiving a section dedicated to the notion of performativity in art. Located at the Bregenzer Festspiele's See Salon, it overlooks the Bregenzer See and the famous temporary lake stage. Titled INTERPLAY, the section suggests that the artworks on display, when staged, expand through their interaction with an audience. When contextualized within an opera house, such a feature is inevitably amplified, if not entirely played up. In INTERPLAY, the cohort of invited galleries have in common that they present artists whose practices have integrated the relational encounters with which their work is embedded. That is a performativity that isn't necessarily about performance nor theatricality but deals instead with the interplay of reactions -- with time, space and bodies-- that their making or exhibiting involves. Presenting a wide range of expanded, cross-media practices that involve sculpture, painting, drawing and photography, INTERPLAY ultimately celebrates the limitless sovereignty of art when approached through the singularity of perception into the plurality of experiences, in which each viewer decides what kind of receiver they want to be.

Section: Influx and efflux
Curator: Fiammetta Griccioli

“Influx and efflux” focuses on seven monographic presentations, revealing a group of artists that belong to different generations and geographical areas, whose practices are rooted in mutability, transformation and metamorphosis. The selected artists share a common approach by challenging the threshold between bidimensional and three dimensional realms and expanding what is commonly defined as painting, sculpture and installation. In different ways, their interdisciplinary practices scrutinize concepts such as technology and nature prompting a reflection on the most pressing issues at stake in today’s society. 

Exhibited on the stage of the Festpielhaus in an open architectural display, each project is realized in conversation with the artist and offers a synopsis of their unconventional poetics. A silent dialogue emerges between more historical positions along with established artists together with a younger generation generating exchanges and connections amongst the works. 

The oeuvre of Laura Grisi (1929-2017) and Constantin Flondor (b.1936) pioneers in investigating how technologies affect our perception resonate with Vadim Fishkin’s (1965) post-conceptual practice that ironically engages with science and technology. Following their legacy, Judith Fegerl (b.1977, Vienna), fascinated by time based transformative processes, expands sculpture via the use of invisible forces such as electricity. Whilst artists Anna Hulačová (b.1984, Sušice, Czech Republic) Jasmine Gregory (b. 1987, Washington D.C) and Iman Issa (b.1979, Cairo) engage with a sculptural lexicon that lingers on the tension between figuration and abstraction exploring the notions of western history and iconography.

SEE
Lukas Birk, Katharina Fitz, Arno Gisinger, Mathias Kessler, Claudia Larcher, David Murray, Anna und Maria Ritsch
Curator: Verena Kaspar-Eisert

Art facilitates identification and reflection, encourages integration and participation, awareness and transformation. It celebrates the beautiful as much as the ugly, tempts us to fantasise and exposes deception. Art reflects upon and questions the past, the present and the future. Art is an expression of and a projection screen for individuality and community.

Safeguarding, conserving, expanding, researching and educating are core responsibilities of a public museum collection. A collection shapes our cultural understanding of ourselves and of the world around us and reflects the importance of art in a society.

The Vorarlberg-born art historian and Head Curator of the MuseumsQuartier Wien Verena Kaspar-Eisert was invited by STAGE Bregenz and the organisation Bildrecht to select works from the collection of the Province of Vorarlberg. Her focus was the photographic and video works amongst the province’s more recent acquisitions*. The artistic diversity of the region is illustrated by both the broader collection and the range of the selected works: While all the artists work with lens-based media, their approaches to form and content vary widely.

The title of the exhibition SEE alludes to the Bodensee – Lake Constance –, which borders the Festspielhaus and shapes the nature and the culture of the region. This play on words establishes a link between the location of the exhibition and the act of seeing.

There are many different forms of seeing. One can see something from the corner of one’s eye, make out patterns or silhouettes, see through something, catch a glimpse. One can question one’s own perspective, observe analytically, stare at something, or let one’s gaze settle on it. The “seeing view” (Max Imdahl) describes an impartial approach that focusses on the precise consideration of a work of art as opposed to the recognising view, which falls back on preconceived ideas. This small, concentrated exhibition is presented in a way that seeks to favour this attentive form of seeing: By being hung on separate wooden elements, each work is given a lot of space in order to underline the individuality and autonomy of the artistic positions.

In the impressive Propter Homines Room, SEE is offering a small insight into the collecting activities of the province, presenting individual works by eight Vorarlberg artists and inviting visitors to linger awhile as they participate in the act of seeing.
 

*Art acquisitions by the Province of Vorarlberg: 2016–2018 by Claudia Voit and Peter Niedermair, 2019–2021 by Herta Pümpel and Erhard Witzel

STAGE TREFF:
A program of informal conversations on sustaining practices, relationships and the environment
Curator: Matylda Krzykowski

There's a story that I love that taught me all I know about the arts. It's actually a story about people. And that is what I both fully enjoy, and what is also the source of many questions I have on my mind: 

Why do we need to be more courageous? Why do we need both freedom and constraints? What is my relationship to art and design? Why is the appeal of art, design and architecture so important? How can we integrate art, design and architecture into society? How can we blur the borders of our disciplines? Why does innovation lie precisely within the aesthetic of our culture? How can the potential of a region be leveraged globally? What are the different models of being an artist, a designer or an architect? How to introduce the local potential globally? What is the role of art and design and its emancipatory and progressive potential? What requirements does a practice need? How do we contribute to it as institutions and as audience? What is the artist's responsiveness to sustainability? What does a sustainable fair mean? Is it worth striving for?

So there's a room full of people, and they should all tell their stories, to become part of the story. It is a systematic investigation of a matter of public interest. People who hadn’t related to these questions and met these approaches before might find a way of relating to them.

It is a story where we just have to “Get on stage, get set, go!” (German: Auf die Bühne, fertig, los!) It might all turn into a theater, but we have to open the stage for encounters to produce conversations. Once you are with other people, you need to listen to others, to empathize, and to adapt your own perspective. That`s a way to sustain art, design and architecture. The story that I love is a continuous dialogue. 

Verena Kasper-Eisert, Fiammetta Griccioli, Matylda Krzykowski und Elise Lammer 
Photo: Magdalena Türtscher

Photo: Magdalena Türtscher