25.04.–07.07.2013
Main Hall

The Practice of Love

Opening: April 24, 2013, 7 p.m.

Together with the exhibiton a catalog has been published.

The exhibition The Practice of Love included national and international contemporary art perspectives that deal with love as a culture practice.

Love is a complex interplay of individual desires and feelings as well as societal expectations, norms, and ideas. Love develops from a collection of physical, emotional, and cultural factors. The kind of love that is allowed, wished for, or tolerated depends on social conditions, economic interests, religious doctrines, and moral ideas, which in turn represent the framework for the subjective practice of love (expectations, behavior...).

The respective social orientation of the definition of love means that love is evaluated differently. In some cultures, being in love or the state of love is classified as a dangerous disease, because it seriously threatens social order, family security, and economic safeguards. The apparent naturalness of our Western models of love becomes visible in its construction and becomes relative as one of many possible ways of life and love. Thus the concept of romantic love that we are familiar with only represents one potential form of love. It represents a cultural ideal that is defining for both our subjective practice of love as well as media’s images of love. However, these images of lovers can only be partially reconciled with our everyday life and love situations.

Artists: Marina Abramović, Katharina Aigner,
Sophie Calle, Brice Dellsperger, Carola Dertnig, VALIE EXPORT, Christian Jankowski,
Tracey Moffatt, Pipilotti Rist, Toni Schmale,
Viktoria Tremmel, Marianne Vlaschits

Curators: Doris Guth, Hemma Schmutz
Exhibition architecture:
Nicole Six und Paul Petritsch
Project assistance: Susanne Staelin