Abstract Space

With the exhibition Abstract Space, MUMOK was presenting its Collection of Classical Modernism from new points of view and in an expanded context. The search for abstract and constructivist images in the period 1907–1945 is of special importance here.

With Abstract Space Florian Pumhösl, who developed this exhibition in collaboration with MUMOK, made it possible to experience the diversity of media and content in art developments during the first half of the twentieth century. The presentation was divided into nine areas using an architectural grid. These areas were devoted to specific artistic constellations and subject matters such as 'Notational Systems and Alphabets', 'Stages', 'Figure and Dance', or 'Portraits'. Magazines and publications that influenced developments in the arts during the first half of the twentieth century were presented in special displays at the centre of this spatial structure.

Since a collection is also always a fragment, the exhibition consciously refused any aspirations in the direction of an encyclopaedic or closed form of presentation. Starting from specific works and their contexts, concrete artistic relationships and aesthetic references were made visible in the respective spatial segments. Typographic designs by Herbert Bayer from the collection, for example, were supplemented by alphabets by Joost Schmidt and Karel Teige, or Kokoschka’s portrait of Karl Kraus were ronted with Irena Blühova’s photographs of workers.

Abstract Space relied on detailed depictions of concrete and cross-genre formations of classical modernity outside any of the traditional isms and conventional forms of art history categorization.

This repositioning of classical modernity was aimed at producing an active dialogue between the works in the MUMOK and those in related collections in the proximate geographical surroundings such as the Austrian Theatre Museum, the Austrian Museum for Social and Economic Affairs, the Museum of Applied Arts, Prague, or the Egidio Marzona (private) collection, Berlin.