VIENNA.- For three months, the exhibition Vienna for Art’s Sake! will contrast contemporary art with the splendid ambiance of Prince Eugene of Savoy’s former residence. The designer and exhibition-maker Peter Noever invited thirteen contemporary artists to enter into a dialogue with thirteen Baroque rooms at the Winter Palace.

The starting point for the show was Vienna for Art’s Sake!/Archive Austria, Austria’s contribution to Luciano Benetton’s art project Imago Mundi. A collector and connoisseur of contemporary art, this prominent Italian fashion magnate and president of the Fondazione Benetton Studi Ricerche, has been inviting established and emerging artists all over the world to explore in their art a canvas in a postcard format of 10 by 12 cm. Currently, Benetton can boast over 10,000 works from 60 countries in his ever-growing inventory of contemporary art. In contrast to Imago Mundi’s other country archives, Peter Noever opened up Archive Austria not only to artists but also to architects and designers who live and work in Vienna or who have left behind an important contribution to the city, regardless of their geographic origins or nationality. The 161 works from Archive Austria will be presented in the Primary Exhibition in the Sala Terrena at the Winter Palace from 27 February to 31 May 2015. The thirteen artists from Archive Austria, who were selected to create installations in thirteen rooms of the state apartment, explore the significance of contemporary artistic production and visualize the unbroken force of thinkers and visionaries. On display are installations by Vito + Maria Elena Acconci, Zaha Hadid, Magdalena Jetelová, Michael Kienzer, Hans Kupelwieser, the next ENTERprise, Hermann Nitsch, Eva Schlegel, Kiki Smith, Iv Toshain, Atelier Van Lieshout, Koen Vanmechelen, and Manfred Wakolbinger.

The exhibition in Vienna is the first to present on a large scale the stature of the artist personalities behind the postcard format of 10 by 12 cm. Painters, architects, designers, and Conceptual artists faced the challenge of visualizing their artworks in an unusually small format. Peter Noever then invited artists to nominate other artists, architects, and designers, thus questioning prevailing curatorial practice. “A microcosm to which the artists have given various forms, intense and mysterious [...] arising from a maximum concentration of strokes, colours and materials,” is how Luciano Benetton describes his collection. “The 161 works tell us, each in its own way, that beyond today’s obsession with economics, a cultural geography endures that can enhance our happiness; this vivacity of ideas makes our lives, individual and collective, richer, more fertile and worth living,” Benetton continues.

Luciano Benetton, who cherishes Austria as a traditional centre of art, set out to secure Peter Noever for Vienna for Art’s Sake! – Austria’s contribution to the Luciano Benetton Collection. “Luciano Benetton was willing to unconditionally accept my ‘unique system of relationship’,” Peter Noever relates about the collaboration. “And, of course, […] we are faced with an essential question: how free can the decision be to make art that is itself produced in a state of increasing dependency? […] The refusal to pit the value of art against its price is naturally a central concern of the artist. […] They bow (often as a matter of survival) to the dictate of the market, the gallery, the collector, and the commissioner with clear guidelines. These and other premises were the true challenge for me when I was first confronted with the present project. An experiment. And a process with an uncertain outcome. For me, of course, it was about nothing less than a liberating view, opening up a new perspective on the actual production of contemporary art and architecture while also pointing out visions.” Peter Noever continues.

After Looking Eastward (Russia), Snapshot Romania (Romania) and Iceland/Boiling Ice (Iceland), Vienna for Art’s Sake! is now the fourth European collection in Imago Mundi. In this “world archive of art”, Luciano Benetton is redefining art collecting. His project Imago Mundi is philanthropic in nature and aims to present a wide spectrum featuring a maximum number of artists and perspectives in art.