Tele(visions) puts the most popular medium of the 20th century in a contemporary art perspective. TV is not only our main supplier of information, entertainment, and infotainment, but also a kind comforter to the lonely, the baby-sitter that children really love, a relaxant, and, to some, the no. 1 cultural epidemic. TV is the largest available reservoir of the collective memory, creating and transforming identities ? no least because it makes the private public. Tele(visions) shows how artists have incorporated, critically questioned, and occasionally reinvented their TV
experience in their work, analyzing and ironizing couch potatoes, talkshow hosts, quiz programs and TV news, glamorous prime-time shows and the circus of afternoon talkshows.
The exhibition documents artists? initiatives for a different kind of TV, presents ways of continual image recycling and makes clear that TV is more than easily accessible mine of material for video art.
A unique compilation of paintings, photographs, sculpture, installations, and videos illustrates the intense attention that artists from different social and ideological backgrounds have given to TV in their work, in playful or serious ways.
A comprehensive side program of discussions, film showings, club evenings, and concerts gives an expanded survey of the various diverse influences of, and reactions to, TV on different generations of artists and their media and art approaches.
Kurator / curator: Joshua Decter, New York
Projektleitung /project manager: Gabriele Mackert, Kuratorin Kunsthalle Wien
Kurator Begleitprogramm / curator side program: Justin Hoffmann, München/Wien