Vienna Secession presents EBB & Neïl Beloufa, B. Ingrid Olson and Lieselott Beschorner

June 29–September 4, 2022

EBB & Neïl Beloufa: Pandemic Pandemonium

Screen Talk—Cheat Island—Console of Quiz—Press Key Port—Hand of Vengeance—Tax Haven Roulette—Souvenir Shop: these are the various stations of Pandemic Pandemonium. In actuality, the entire exhibition functions as a sort of walk-on game board. As you move from area to area, gathering information and hints for quiz questions and other small challenges, you can try your luck and, with a little finesse and calm nerves, even win real works of art at the “gaming machines.” Be not frightened! The game is lighthearted and parodic, and the solutions are buried in the sixteen episodes of the video installation Screen Talk. A trip to Cheat Island might also be beneficial, however you might later face moral quandaries.

The show begins with Screen Talk, a satire of trashy soap operas that debuted in 2014 (!). Its plot is around a global pandemic, the search for a cure, ostensible personal sacrifices and crises, and interpersonal communication limited to computer screens. These “screen conversations” became a frequent reality for many of us during the Covid-19 pandemic. Beloufa expanded and adapted the piece under the title Screen Talk after working with EBB as a result of the work becoming increasingly relevant to him. The movie was split up into a number of short episodes, to which they programmed interactive features to transform them into an online game. You have the option to customize the digital template Hand of Vengeance at the exhibition if cryptographic art is more your style. Then purchase the image as an NFT (non-fungible token), and store it in your own cryptocurrency wallet.

Many artists have changed their techniques to be more sustainable during the past two years as a result of the epidemic and all the issues it has brought about—many shows had to be canceled or postponed. Some, like Beloufa, have investigated creative alternatives in the virtual world. He recently established the production company EBB, which bills itself as a “node and platform for the distribution of cultural experiences and products specializing in the use of Web3 solutions,” and describes itself as a “node and platform for the distribution of playful interactive formats (gaming) and studying crypto art and phenomena such as NFTs” (see its website at ebb.global).

Pandemic Pandemonium is an enlarged version of the exhibition first presented at Clearing, Brussels (2022).

Neïl Beloufa was born in Paris in 1985 and lives and works in Montreuil.

B. Ingrid Olson: Elastic X

B. Ingrid Olson persistently explores the idea of what seeing and being seen are. Small humanoid ceramics, multidimensional photographic artifacts, and a sculpture installation that simultaneously responds to and inverts the architectural features of the gallery are all on display in Olson’s exhibition Elastic X at the Secession. Olson’s work highlights the perceptual connections between her own body, viewers’ bodies, and architectural bodies, whether it is photographed, mechanically carved, or cast from a mold.

The artwork shows how she dwells, navigates, and transforms the confines of her studio using her body as the primary medium. Apertures, thresholds, reflections, transparency, opacity, light, and shadow are just a few examples of architectural and vision-related restrictions that are frequently present in the work both inside and outside of a picture, serving as a frame. Multidimensional objects and visuals that re-imagine physical capabilities and spatial organization are the end products of this technique.

Olson deals with the difficulty of fitting complete areas and full bodies onto a single picture plane by employing a range of means and techniques while working intuitively. The effects of doubling, reflection, and numerous viewpoints obstruct coherence in fragmented image-impressions, leading to tensions between an internal, subjective experience and an outside, imaged topic. She layers representations of a malleable body against temporary backdrops to test the flexibility of representation, playing out gestures or using props that signify gendered or androgynous traits in a variety of ways.

B. Ingrid Olson was born in Denver in 1987 and lives in Chicago.

Lieselott Beschorner: Im Atem der Zeit (In the Breath of Time)

Lieselott Beschorner has been creating art for more than seven decades and a part of the Vienna Secession for an equal amount of time. She was one of the first women accepted to the Association of Visual Artists in 1951; the Secession, which was founded in 1897, had been exclusively for men until just after the war. Beschorner held her first solo exhibition at the Secession just a few years later, in 1954. This was followed by solo exhibitions there in 1966 and 1972, and she continued to regularly have her work included in group exhibitions up until the mid-1970s.Around that time, the artist began teaching at a technical school, a job she would have for more than thirty years. In the meantime, new trends began to compete for public attention, and her art started to slip from view.

Unfazed, Beschorner continued to create art using the tools at her disposal, developing a body of work that is as diverse as it is complex: from abstract paintings to expressively representational drawings and collages, from ceramics and textile works—including the body of work that is likely most well-known today, the Puppas—to her most recent sculptures, like the Behutete Kopffiguren (Hatted-Head Figures), and a vast collection of drawings on the pervas (Weeping Omnichroniclers). The monstrous serves as the unifying motif that ties these various parts of her body of work together.

Many of Lieselott Beschorner’s creations and methods before those of following generations of female artists, such as Sarah Lucas’ or Annette Messager’s work; her Puppas even predate Louise Bourgeois’ ragdolls. Prior to the public’s first exposure to her developing works at MUSA a decade ago, there were few possibilities for the public to do so. We are thrilled to welcome her exhibition Im Atem der Zeit at The Secession (In the Breath of Time). It demonstrates that Beschorner’s work hasn’t lost any of its vitality and still speaks forcefully to modern issues by including both recent works and chosen pieces from older periods of her oeuvre.

Lieselott Beschorner, born 1927 in Vienna, lives and works in Vienna.

The exhibition program is conceived by the board of the Secession.

Opening program
Press conference: June 28, 11am
Exhibition talk: June 28, 6pm, Neïl Beloufa in conversation with Axel Stockburger
Opening & garden party: June 28, 7pm