29 June 2007 – 4 October 2007

Dream and Trauma

The place where trauma originates is a non-place, indicating a breach between consciousness and perception. Within trauma, reality manifests itself with a direct intensity as a symbolic wound of existence. Trauma is a blank space, a gap within consciousness, which can be closed by the efforts of memory only to a certain extent. The works on display in this exhibition, by artists such as Olafur Eliasson, Jim Shaw, Kristine Roepstorff, Kiki Smith, Christopher Wool and even Jeff Koons, are informed by that negativity. They testify to the primary non-representability of the traumatic experience. An “aesthetic of trauma” depicts forms of pain, of fear and injury (Cindy Sherman, William Kentridge) that are often inscribed into the body (Kiki Smith), showing the wound of being and the injury of the existential. It visualises inner states of being and de-ranged perceptions of reality (Robert Gober). It discovers an art that visualises what is repressed and rejected (Gregory Crewdson, Urs Fischer, Tim Noble/Sue Webster) - and hence also liberates desires, cravings and dreams associated with distress.

Address

MUMOK Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien
MuseumsQuartier Museumsplatz 1
1070 Wien
phone +43 1 525 00
http://www.mumok.at

Opening Hours

Daily 10 a.m. - 6 p.m., Thursday till 9 p.m..

Description of the Museum

The collection consists in classical modernism (Kandinsky, Klee, Magritte...)

New building opened 2001; architects: Ortner & Ortner

Within 10 days
starting exhibitions
ending exhibitions