Image, Reality and Research from 1960 until 1980

Parallel to the exhibition media block-richard-kriesche, the Neue Galerie Graz shows those tendencies that Kriesche’s art is based on and the context that enables us to understand it: from 1960 to 1980, art opened up radically new territory. The image as expression of an individual personality was given up for the reflection of single elements of the panel painting and the exploration of visual perception. That led in turn to the withdrawal from the image in the traditional sense.

Visual artists turned to the new media of image generation – the computer, television, video – and in their works turned the effects of these media on art and public life into their themes. Technological progress became the prerequisite in terms of contents so as to understand art no longer in a symbolic sense, but rather to define it as part of reality, and acting with it. Media reality and actual reality thus become a new determining level of awareness.

At the time, the Neue Galerie Graz, with its ‘trigon’ exhibitions and ‘International Painters’ Weeks’‚ was one of the hotspots of this avant-garde scene. For this reason, works of these artists found their way into the collection, enabling us now to offer visitors a journey through the various stages of evolution of these pioneering artists.