RETURN

RETURN is an exhibition in media space and continues the consistent strategy of museum in progress : the artistic message intervenes as a fragment within a space made available to it; in RETURN this is in the middle of the inner structure of a newspaper / the landscape of a medium. artists of various origins (nationality, generation, genre etc.) have been invited to take part in RETURN. they have in common that vienna is currently the focus of their lives. part of the concept is the realisation of a journey, the possibility of an experience, a distancing,central to this the answer to the journey, the RETURN.

RETURN is the reverse side of ESCAPE, a contrast (compare the computer commands). RETURN is the coming back and redemption. the result of a journey. the beginning of an activity, an emanation, a reaction as an act and not as a reflex. RETURN is the appearance of art in a place provided for it but which is nevertheless available. the potency and potential of the media space is not deployed like guided missile of discourse on the principle of a (regulating) power. the artistic fragments manifest themselves like moments of interruption or lines of escape within media space. RETURN allows art to get back to its tasks beyond those of prettification, of being theornamental accessory, of an investment, of an object for relaxation, of dalliance with abuse acknowledged with a smile, of the escape into beautiful worlds – lets art get away from the secure unreality to which it has been allocated.

in a social and political recession it is this imaginative quality of art which is turned into an argument of irrelevance. to declare art to be an obsolete symbolic luxury of a society is selling it for scrap and therefore strictly speaking a short-sighted, opportunistic, utilltarian defamation. RETURN is the sense and at this time a necessary display of real artistic wealth and, just as necessarily, a pointer towards the importance of accessibility and participation.