Michael Kienzer

Under the new artistic direction of Florian Steininger, the Kunsthalle Krems will focus on an interdisciplinary, progressive and international orientation, featuring positions of established and young, contemporary artists.

In July 2016, Florian Steininger took over the artistic direction of the Kunsthalle Krems. Located at the gates of Vienna, the Lower Austrian exhibition center has become an institution of national and international standing in the field of contemporary art over the past 20 years. “My future programming will feature works created after 1945, and I will put special emphasis on contemporary art,” explains Florian Steininger. “The Kunsthalle Krems will offer established and emerging young artists from Austria and abroad an extensive platform to present innovative, cross-media, socially topical and art-specific contributions.”

These presentations will take place in the form of extensive thematic and solo exhibitions. Opening in July 2017, Florian Steininger’s first large thematic exhibition, “Abstract Painting Now! Gerhard Richter, Katharina Grosse, Sean Scully …”, marks the starting point of the new artistic director’s program line. In addition, comprehensive exhibitions will provide insights into first-class private collections of modern and contemporary art, including the Hubert Looser private collection (Zurich, Switzerland). The media orientation ranges from classical genres, such as painting, drawing and sculpture, to photography, video, film and performance and all the way to installations as well as other conceptual and new-media disciplines. Through its annual collaboration with the internationally known donaufestival, the Kunsthalle Krems emphasizes its interdisciplinary and progressive orientation.

For now, however, the Kunsthalle Krems is closed due to extensive restoration work. It will reopen on July 1, 2017. During the renovation phase, which will last several months, Florian Steininger will realize his first exhibition project in conjunction with the Austrian artist Michael Kienzer in the Gothic Minorite Church in the picturesque Old Town of Krems/Stein.

Michael Kienzer
Qualities of materiality, montage and construction as well as the contextualization of space—all the way to public space—play an eminent role in Michael Kienzer’s oeuvre. Born in 1962, Kienzer studied sculpture in the master class of Josef Pillhofer from 1977 to 1979 and ranks among the leading exponents of “new sculpture” of the 1980s. Proceeding from an increasingly expressive sculptural charge, his concept of sculpture has shifted toward spatial, constructivist conceptuality.

Michael Kienzer will present a site-specific installation, created especially for this exhibition project, in the nave, aisles and choir of the Minorite Church in Stein. In Kienzer’s work, object and space are interdependent; installation and arrangement eminent. Only a few parts of the installation are put together with screws; for the most part they are loosely stuck together or fastened in a makeshift manner. The artist charges his work with momentum and tension. A precarious energy on the verge of deconstruction fills the room. The work for the Gothic church is conceived as an open, fragmentary construction composed of metal tubes and wooden boards. This results in an open grid, a framework for an assemblage in space.

Curator: Florian Steininger

Location:
Kunsthalle Krems @ Klangraum Krems/Minoritenkirche
Hours: Tuesday–Sunday 11am–5pm