Art & Ecology

Over the past five years, KUNST HAUS WIEN has dedicated itself to a clear programmatic orientation: The museum is the place in Vienna that negotiates environmental and sustainability issues within the art discourse. At the center of the exhibition activities are photography as an artistic medium and those themes that take up the pioneering role as the first Green Museum. Against the background of the work of Friedensreich Hundertwasser and his visionary commitment to environmental and socio-political responsibility, KUNST HAUS WIEN presents exhibitions of contemporary art and combines them with an interdisciplinary and continuing discourse programme.

With the successful exhibition Edward Burtynsky. Water (2017), the house presented large-format photographs by the Canadian artist, in which he documented landscapes, industrial sites or conurbations changed by human hand. Burtynsky's series of works on water focuses on one of the most valuable resources for our bodies and our planet. The photographer talks about the potential of art, he says: "through art, man can be sensitized to the consequences of his actions (...) because through art we raise our consciousness and develop our stories.

In the group exhibition Visions of Nature (2017-2018), KUNST HAUS WIEN also impressively demonstrated that the medium of photography and video has a special role to play in efforts to understand the current relationship between man and nature. These are observations of nature that illustrate, filter and analyse the current ambivalence of our understanding of ecology - nature as a place of refuge and longing vs. destruction and exploitation of the threatened environment.

Since March 2015, the museum has also been using the KUNST HAUS WIEN Garage to host exhibitions of projects from the fields of art, architecture and design with a focus on ecology, sustainability and urbanity. Presentations such as Climate Changes Everything (2015), Oliver Ressler. How to Occupy a Shipwreck (2018) or RESANITA. The House as Host (2018), with its highly topical themes such as climate change, economy and biodiversity, has its finger on the pulse of today's discussions on the Paris Agreement and Fridays For Future. Originally, the space was used as a garage for the furniture company Thonet and later for Friedensreich Hundertwasser's Casa Piccola.