GRAZ, AUSTRIA.- The inaugural exhibition of Kunsthaus Graz focuses on perception: the experience of the exhibits adds to the experience of the Kunsthaus Graz building. With more than forty international positions from the past four decades, the exhibition focuses on specific questions of perception, making them available for direct experimentation. Perception is not a given, not to be taken for granted. The challenge here - by presenting a specific sphere with great precision - is to demonstrate the complexity and uniqueness of a process that defines mankind, from the biological necessities to manifold cultural demands.

At the beginning of the exhibition, the artists Sarah Morris, Chuck Close and Manfred Willmann concentrate on the phenomenon of face perception. Grids and details emphasise the fractal aspect of the process of perception and link up to the works of Esther Stocker. In her patterns, Bridget Riley tests the instability of colours, thereby seemingly creating movement. Angela Bulloch and Richard Kriesche explore the meaning of the media and their suggestive power with regard to perceptual memory, providing a sensorial experience for the visitor. Studies on light and sensory perception are the theme for Robert Irwin and Olafur Eliasson’s overwhelming light-circle. Motion perception is the focus of various works by Italian kinetists such as Grazia Varisco or Gruppo MID: one spectacular installation is the reconstruction of Gianni Colombo’s Spazio Elastico, that already immersed visitors in a constantly changing system of co-ordinates at the Graz trigon in 1967. Perspective and three-dimensional perception are the aspects explored in the works of Rachel Khedoori, Jan Dibbets or Heinz Gappmayr. Alfons Schilling’s installation investigates our perception of motion and three-dimensionality. David Rokeby’s installation, that separates standstill and motion, extends into the outside. Alberto Biasi, Gabriele De Vecchi, Marc Adrian and Helga Philipp, in turn, take advantage of optical effects to simulate depth and to incorporate the viewer into the processes of perception by means of his own movement. Various sculptural works by Liz Larner, Anthony Caro and Taft Green complement the exhibition, focusing on material and exploring colour and shape. An iridescence between levels is also the subject of works by Mario Ballocco and Remy Zaugg. In their works, both artists test our visual perception, investigating the laws of colour and shape. Jorrit Tornquist’s works are also concerned with such laws of colour, but also with the ambivalence of light and shadow. Works by Qui Shihua and Herbert Brandl explore how our consciousness strives to complete reduced information in an effort to make something whole and meaningful. The works by Yves Klein and Ernesto Neto reflect on our haptic experiences, explaining their sensory processes and juxtaposing them with the sphere of visuality. Michael Schuster and Matthew Ngui, finally, unmask the process of perception as a set pattern to which we succumb again and again: not everything that we think we see is what it really is. Visiting the exhibition, with its artistic studies on perception, forces us to rethink our familiar habits of seeing and hearing in this context. We gain a new experience of what we think of as familiar.

Featured artists: Marc Adrian (A), Darren Almond (GB), Getulio Alviani (I), Mario Ballocco (I), Alberto Biasi (I), Herbert Brandl (A), Angela Bulloch (CDN), Anthony Caro (GB), Chuck Close (USA), Gianni Colombo (I), Toni Costa (I), Gabriele De Vecchi (I) Jan Dibbets (NL), Olafur Eliasson (IS), Heinz Gappmayr (A), Taft Green (USA), Robert Irwin (USA), Ellsworth Kelly (USA), Rachel Khedoori (USA), Yves Klein (F), Richard Kriesche (A), Liz Larner (USA), Enzo Mari (I), Gruppo MID (I), Sarah Morris (GB), Ernesto Neto (BR), Max Neuhaus (USA), Matthew Ngui (SG), Helga Philipp (A), Qiu Shihua (CN), Markus Raetz (CH), Bridget Riley (GB), David Rokeby (CA), Alfons Schilling (CH), Michael Schuster (A), Henryk Stazewski (PL), Esther Stocker (I), Jorrit Tornquist (A), Grazia Varisco (I), Manfred Willmann (A), Remy Zaugg (CH).

Catalogue - The exhibition catalogue is published by Buchhandlung Walther Konig, Cologne and presents more than forty positions of contemporary artists, featuring pictures of works and an accompanying text by Peter Pakesch. By comparing selected scientific writings by Csaba Pleh, Gabor Zemplen and Ilona Kovacs, the aim is to sensitise the viewer to processes of perception and, by means of deceptions, to illustrate the complex processes in our brain.