Hier & Jetzt / Hic & Hunc

The building complex of the Klosterneuburg Monastery features many historical periods and aesthetic formal languages, all of which are associated with the representative role of a residence of the House of Babenberg and later the House of Habsburg. Over the years, the different architectural styles in the Klosterneuburg Monastery have become intertwined in a kind of collage, in contrast to other monasteries that are often characterized by a uniform architectural ensemble. Originating with the remnants of a Roman military camp, the grounds were then expanded over the centuries and developed from a small Romanesque mediaeval castle to a complex with additional Gothic and Renaissance-inspired buildings, to a Baroque residence for the emperor and an unfinished monastery palace modelled after the Spanish Escorial. In addition to these more glamorous features, the monastery also houses the oldest vineyard in Austria and is home to the Leopoldi Fair, whose secular tradition goes back 300 years. Amusement, glamour, a mix of styles, the adoration of saints, and power politics are thus all reflected in these buildings, as are pastoral care, asceticism, the golden age of culture and science, and a wealth of artistic treasures. The three outdoor artistic interventions surround the monastery with surprising formal solutions that are placed at various points around the grounds, each located at a place that has a specific meaning for the monastery's history. The three artists all share a skepticism toward the formal canons of high culture and modernism, playing with them humorously, or overriding them altogether. All three also work with design elements that are borrowed from the public realm and everyday culture, while also taking a site-specific approach. After all, the history of the monastery offers fascinating material: the tradition of celebrations and the "Fasslrutschen" (sliding down a large wine barrel) as well as the 900-year-old history of building construction served as reference points for each artist to develop their artistic ideas.

In his working method, Christoph Meier focuses on how we interact with objects. For his project, he used the famous work Verb List Compilation: Actions to Relate to Oneself (1967/68) by Richard Serra as a key reference with which to question conventions of sculpture. Meier likes to work with materials and objects that have a history within the context of art or that derive from the social environment of the artist and his everyday practice. The randomness with which objects from his studio become part of his works is just as integral to the artwork's concept as is his copying already existing works or objects. Meier is interested in destabilizing authorship as a category, and he insists on the preliminary quality of works as a specific approach within the art context. Only when we walk around the entire monastery are we able to fully understand Meier's intervention in the Klosterneuburg Monastery. Hidden away in the courtyard of the apothecary garden, we encounter the ten-meter-high Ferris wheel designed by the artist. The wheel refers to the tradition of the Leopoldi Fair, which has been celebrated in the monastery and the surrounding area since the seventeenth century. In addition to the many fair attractions, the so-called “Fasslrutschen” (sliding down the side of the monastery’s gigantic cask that holds roughly 56,000 liters) also has its traditional place in the celebrations. Sitting in a chair that rotates on a vertical axis in sync with other riders is the most abstract form of amusement Christoph Meier could imagine. He thus connects obvious concepts – like community, interaction, and balance with his use of language as a sculptural device. The exploration of the geometric and abstract vocabulary of forms and their performative and narrative potential is characteristic for Meier’s working method. This is reflected in the simple form of the circle, which in this case becomes charged with the experience of exhilaration and community.

Linking a vocabulary of forms from high culture and modernism with the standardized material language of industrial objects and products is a key theme in Manuel Gorkiewicz's artistic practice. He counteracts the heroic formal language of modernism through the use of mundane decorative elements. At a basic level, his sculptures also address the role of taste and its socio-economic associations and contexts. By giving original materials like streamers, lanterns, and other decorative elements unusual dimensions and forms associated with art history, he creates baffling ambiguities and decontextualizes objects in art and the public space. Manuel Gorkiewicz’s architectural intervention for the Klosterneuburg Monastery consists of silver PVC foil pennant strings that remind us of those used to attract customers at car dealerships. As a temporary ornament, the foil connects seven distinct points of the monastery leading from the former canonesses’ church, to the Baroque dome modeled after the emperor’s crown, up to the monastery church. Like an oversized sewing thread, Gorkiewicz ties together the stylistically heterogeneous buildings of the monastery that have continued to expand and be remodeled since the twelfth century. The intervention creates a sense of bewilderment through its merging of a geometric order with a decorative and mundane material used frequently in suburban areas. The flair of the flapping foil corresponds to the sensuousness of the Baroque facade and is also reminiscent of artistic interventions in the 1970s by Gordon Matta-Clark, whose works like Splitting and Conical Intersect lent public buildings and private houses new sculptural forms.

Many of Nicole Wermers' artworks illustrate her interest in the structure and design of public space and the world of commodities. The way our environment is organized and what is thus communicated is a key focus of her sculptures and installations. Often odd everyday objects serve as triggers that enable us to draw conclusions about the state of society through their symptomatic emergence and placement. Wermers concentrates on not only small forms of design, like muesli mixes, dispensers, or standard ash trays, but also on larger structures, like shelves, street cafés, or anti-theft detectors. By processing these in different ways – creating new versions, and placing them in new contexts – she reveals the sculptural aspects of these elements, while also referring to their structural significance. In their new form, these objects often appear so out of place that even their everyday function seems strange. For the Klosterneuburg Monastery, Nicole Wermers replaced the pavement in front of the ground-floor hall (the so-called sala terrena), which after renovation in 2006 became the new main entrance of the monastery, with a mixture of colored sand, glass, and natural stone elements in various shades and sizes. In her personal mixture of elements created especially for the monastery, she refers to the 900 years of history of its architecture. From its beginning as a small castle in the High Middle Ages, to its remodeling into an unfinished monastery palace, up to its most recent comprehensive renovation in 2005, the monastery’s appearance is marked by a multitude of intersecting styles. As if to create a sense of alienation or a surreal dream image, the somewhat psychedelic mixture of sand creates a new way of looking at the heterogeneous complex of buildings, its dazzling splendor reflecting the aesthetics of the church’s artistic treasures. (Cosima Rainer)

The Klosterneuburg Monastery opened its doors metaphorically and physically for this anniversary project, in which six artists were offered the chance to engage in a dialogue with central sites within the monastery. The result was that its sacral places – the monastery church, Leopoldi Chapel, and Verdun Altar, cloister garden, and the lobby of the Sebastiani Chapel – became interwoven with the secular parts of the monastery, like the wine cellar and the marble hall of the emperor's former residence. The artists invited were chosen with the idea in mind that they would be able to engage in an eye-level "dialogue" with the specific historical, formal, and thematic situation of the site. That the themes addressed could all too easily invite different opinions meant that artistic sensitivity and artists' clear understanding of their own position was required in order to respectfully and productively handle potential ideological differences. The results speak for themselves and demonstrate in different and surprising ways what makes up the quality of such interventions in existing structures: namely, the complex interaction between engaging with what is already there and the ability to confidently rely on one's own approach to these particular demands. Because of the largeness and spaciousness of the area, we thought it was necessary to find something that would unite all nine projects relating to these actual sites. That is why one artist was also invited to take an overall look at the monastery and the projects, independent of any specific location, which was aptly done in a sound work instead of a visual one.