CURTAIN – VORHANG documents the long-term initiative "Safety Curtain" of museum in progress, a project that is unique in the world. The exhibition series in the Vienna State Opera has represented a symbolic interface between performance and visual arts since 1998. It also creates a link between thorny historical questions and contemporary ways to address them. Beyond the actual curtain images that have originated over the years an associative and sensuous view to further related works of the participating artists in several different media forms is presented. The art project "Safety Curtain", because of its exceptional quality, its year-long existence and its unusual dimension of 176 m² is singular and enables a distinctive perspective of art history of the past twenty years.
Artists: Tauba Auerbach, John Baldessari, Matthew Barney, Thomas Bayrle, Tacita Dean, Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset, Cerith Wyn Evans, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Richard Hamilton, David Hockney, Christine & Irene Hohenbüchler, Joan Jonas, Jeff Koons, Maria Lassnig, Oswald Oberhuber, Giulio Paolini, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Rosemarie Trockel, Cy Twombly, Kara Walker and Franz West.
Texts: Daniel Birnbaum, Ina Blom, Ecke Bonk, Claudia Büttner, Meg Cranston, Bice Curiger, Chris Dercon, Brigid Doherty, Robert Fleck, Achim Hochdörfer, Brigitte Huck, Chrissie Iles, Élisabeth Lebovici, Marco Livingstone, Michael Mautner, Dominique Meyer, Kaspar Mühlemann Hartl, Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Christine Oertel, Martin Prinzhorn, Stella Rollig, Nancy Spector and Vitus Weh.
CURTAIN – VORHANG, ed. by Kaspar Mühlemann Hartl, museum in progress and Dominique Meyer, Vienna State Opera, Verlag für moderne Kunst, Vienna: 2017, 204 pages, numerous illustrations in colour, ISBN: 978-3-903228-11-5.
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