Exhibition Tour: Recover
Kevin Jerome Everson
Video
Please note that this video is available in English.
The hall’s large exhibition space is darkened and has an imposing screen. There’s plenty of variety here with shorter film works by Kevin Jerome Everson. Everson grew up in Mansfield, Ohio; a town deeply rooted in a working-class industrial culture. As a result, many of Everson’s films feature African-American people at work and doing their jobs. Everson is very subtle and avoids explicit situations and rash judgments. It is interesting to see the searching and questioning gaze of the films, whereby the limits and freedoms of black lives are revealed. Everson’s film works, however, are by no means exhausted in the documentary; rather, they open up an unexpected access to abstraction.
Curator:
Cathrin Mayer
Texts:
Cathrin Mayer
Translation:
Gregory Bond
Voice:
Howard Curtis
Camera & Sound:
kunst-dokumentation.com, Manuel Carreon Lopez
Editor:
Kevin Ferdinandus
Artists
Participating artists
Kevin Jerome Everson
The work and practice of Kevin Jerome Everson encompasses photography, printmaking, sculpture and film. He studied at the University of Akron as well as at Ohio University and is Professor of Art at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. Everson has been recognized with the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Alpert Award in Film/Video, the Heinz Award in Arts and Humanities, the Rome Prize of the American Academy in Rome and the Fellowship of the American Academy in Berlin. He was awarded various grants, from Creative Capital, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, Buffalo; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus; and the Ohio Arts Council.
His artwork has been the subject of retrospectives and solo exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Tate Modern, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York; Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul; and the Harvard Film Archive. His works were presented at international film festivals and art institutions including the Unknown Pleasures Festival, Berlin; Sundance Film Festival, Utah; International Film Festival Rotterdam; Images Film Festival Toronto; Venice International Film Festival; BFI/London Film Festival, International Short Film Festival Oberhausen; European Media Art Festival, Osnabrück; the Viennale, Vienna; BlackStar Film Festival, Philadelphia; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; MOCA, Los Angeles; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; MoMA, New York; and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture, Washington D.C. His films have been featured at the 2008, 2012 and 2017 Whitney Biennial and the 2013 Sharjah Biennial.
Everson is represented by Picture Palace Pictures, New York and Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York.
More contributions
Michael Krebber in conversation with Sandro Droschl
Video
As part of the exhibition A.rtificial I.ntrospection O., Michael Krebber speaks with Sandro Droschl about his artistic practice and his engagement with the writings and conceptual models of Oswald Wiener.
Michael Krebber in conversation with Sandro Droschl A.rtificial I.ntrospection O.
Exhibition Tour
Slide show
The exhibition A.rtificial I.ntrospection O. (A.I.O.) explores questions of thought, perception, and subjectivity at the intersection of introspection, cybernetics, and artificial intelligence. Its point of departure is the work of the Austrian writer, cognitive psychologist, and cybernetician Oswald Wiener (1935 – 2021), whose genuine thinking since the 1950s critically navigated between these fields while systematically resisting institutional appropriation.
Slide Show A.rtificial I.ntrospection O. Dr. Brigitte Borchhardt-Birbaumer
Susanne Wenger’s painting between Africa and Europe
Video
In her lecture, art historian and curator Brigitte Borchhardt-Birbaumer examines Susanne Wenger’s work as a transcultural Gesamtkunstwerk that bridges European modernism and Yorùbá ritual practice, creating a new sacred aesthetic that merges art, ritual, and cultural boundaries.
Brigitte Borchardt Kathy Rae Huffman
FROM CYBERFEMINISM
UNTIL NOW
Video
Kathy Rae Huffman’s lecture traces the evolution of cyberfeminism since the 1990s: it connected women in the digital sphere, challenged existing power structures, and presented examples — from VNS Matrix to contemporary digital activism — that highlight critiques of platform corporations, AI cultures, and global inequalities.
Kathy Rae Huffman Xol Meissner
Concert
Video
New York-based artist Xol Meissner — the alter ego of composer Mauro Hertig — has transformed the HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark into a hypnotic soundscape of extraordinary intensity with his haunting music, which oscillates between contemporary classical and avant-garde rock.
Xol Meissner Karin M. Schmidlechner
Styrian women during and after National Socialism
Video
In her research and in the volume Aus dem Blickfeld (Out of Sight), co-edited with Heimo Halbrainer, Karin Maria Schmidlechner demonstrates that the lived realities of Styrian women during the Nazi era and the postwar period were diverse and ambivalent. Hence, she broadens the scholarly discourse on their daily lives while simultaneously deconstructing common narratives such as that of the conformist woman or the so-called “rubble woman.”
Karin M. Schmidlechner Eva Ursprung
The Art of Surfacing
Slide show
With the exhibition The Art of Surfacing, HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark presents the multifaceted work of Austrian artist, musician, and curator Eva Ursprung, who was awarded the Honorary Prize of the Province of Styria in 2024. Her cross-media, feminist, and socially critical approaches revolve around the element of water as a metaphor for change and political and ecological processes.
Slide show Eva Ursprung Susanne Wenger
Àdùnní Olórìṣà
Slide show
Susanne Wenger gilt als eine zentrale Künstlerin Österreichs nach 1945 und als frühe Wegbereiterin des Surrealismus. Ihr Œuvre, das Skulpturen, Gemälde, Zeichnungen, Drucke und Batiken umfasst, überschreitet ästhetische Kategorien und verbindet Kunst, Spiritualität und Mythos.
Slide Show Susanne Wenger