HOLLEIN in Vienna

The MAK exhibition HOLLEIN, who died a few months ago at the age of 80, delves into his rich universe and undertakes a sweeping new contemplation of his entire body of work based to a large extent on materials from Hans Hollein’s archives that have never been shown in public, including working models, original drawings, objects, and items left over from exhibitions, sketches, notes, scratch paper, photographs, films, and much more. This solo exhibition, conceived as a homage to the great the only Austrian architect to win the Pritzker Prize (1985), by curators Wilfried Kuehn and Marlies Wirth approaches Hollein’s work by thematic priorities rather than retrospectively or chronologically. In harmony with Hollein’s way of thinking, the exhibition does not separate architecture, design, and art, but contextualizes his complex oeuvre by providing analogies of sense and form along a “parcours” through the exhibition.
 

New photographs created especially for the MAK exhibition by contemporary artists Aglaia Konrad and Armin Linke open unfamiliar perspectives into Hollein’s architectural works. The MAK invited these two artists to photograph anew his innovative buildings from the last five decades. Prime examples of Hollein’s museums, such as the Museum Abteiberg in Mönchengladbach (1982), (where until 28 September, a parallel exhibition HANS HOLLEIN: Everything is Architecture [Hans Hollein: Everything is Architecture] is being presented), followed by the Museum of Modern Art (MMK) in Frankfurt/Main (1991), the Tehran Museum of Glass and Ceramics (Iran, 1978), or Vulcania, a vulcanology museum in Saint Ours-les-Roches (France, 2002), are on display, as are Media Lines, the orientation and communications system he designed for the Olympic Games in Munich (1972), and also wellknown Hollein projects in Vienna’s inner city, among them the former candle shop Retti (today the site of the jeweler Y. Gadner) (1965), the boutique CM (1967), and the former jewelry store Schullin am Graben (1974). Displayed in various formats and sequences, the photographs of the two artists are complementary, and together, create a conceptual spatial collage.

Hollein’s visionary architectonic concept of the “Kleeblattprinzip [Clover Leaf Principle],” which he developed for his first museum project, the Museum Abteiberg Mönchengladbach, has been implemented as the model for the architecture of the Hollein exhibition. The succession of rooms proceeds on the diagonal, whereby this diagonal arrangement of square rooms opens up completely new sightlines and cross-connections between the individual rooms and the works displayed therein. The typical symmetry of the MAK exhibit space is foregone in favor of conveying an exhibition experience that makes Hollein’s design principles palpable.

Where.- MAK Exhibition Hall. Stubenring 5, 1010 Vienna, Austria.
When.- until October 5, 2014.

CREDITS.

Guest Curator.- Wilfried Kuehn, Kuehn Malvezzi Architects, Berlin.
Curator.- Marlies Wirth, MAK.
Project manager, Archive Hans Hollein.- Erich Pedevilla.
Exhibition design.- Wilfried Kuehn (Kuehn Malvezzi Architects, Berlin, with Samuel Korn) and Michael Wallraff (Michael Wallraff ZT GmbH, Wien, with Rita Pirpamer and Klaus Stattmann).