Neustart

Neustart, the first project by the newly appointed
director Maria Lind and her curatorial team, Søren Grammel and Katharina Schlieben, consisted of four main pillars: a group exhibition titled Exchange & Transform, the screening series Es ist schwer, das Reale zu berühren (It is hard to touch the real) with the Danish artist Gitte Villesen, a retrospective of the artist Christine Borland, and several so-called Sputnik Projects—three-year interactions between the Kunstverein and artists, curators, critics, and institutions. The Sputnik Projects began with the artist Apolonija Šušteršič’s redesign of the Kunstverein foyer.

Newspaper Article:
Palaver about Palaver
Where Will the Reorientation of the Kunstverein Lead?
“Recycling” seems to be the magic word of the Kunstverein’s new team. The first objects to bite the dust were the chairs in the foyer, formerly designed by the artist Heimo Zobernig. Upholstered and cov- ered in an orange fabric, the chairs now fit in formidably with the retro-brown youth center chic in the entrance hall. Quoting the seventies, the heyday of de- bating and above all experimentation, the Kunstverein’s interior design seems to be sending a clear signal. Maria Lind, the newly appointed director of the Kunst- verein, launched her packed program last weekend together with co-curator Søren Grammel. Lind sees the rede- signed lobby as a “more comfortable and inspired place” for an art discourse that extends quite naturally to the terrain of the political and social. While else- where emphasis is placed on conceiving unorthodox forms of staging, the pilot phase of the newly structured Kunstverein breathes the spirit of a never-ending workshop. There is sewing, lecturing, palavering, mediating, discussing. Maria Lind seems to be preoccupied above all with the creation of other “formats,” whose rhythms can no longer be out- lined by the key markers of vernissages and closing dates. For two whole days, the artists, some of whom were involved in the group exhibition Exchange & Transform, were available for questions. Publishing a newsletter instead
of a catalogue, with images of the artist Carey Young at Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park, can certainly also be read as a programmatic hint. So-called Sputniks,