Nov 22, 6 pm

Isabella Hollauf

Spaces of Recreation

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Utopian models of society have not been rated so highly since the late 1970s/early 1980s. However, social pilot projects have disappeared with them, projects that aimed to make culture and recreation more widely available. Expansively laid out parks and swimming pools were the expression of a desire for participation in public life and prosperity for everyone. Today, only a few of these locations and facilities are still intact; most of them have fallen into decay. Isabella Hollauf starts her work with the disappearance of past social utopias. Her interest is directed not only towards post-communist countries, but also towards those with strong socialist tendencies for many decades, such as Austria or Sweden. In a photographic search for evidence, she retraces the manifest changes in values, revealing former utopian pretensions and the often dismal reality of today. The book shows projects dating from 2001 to 2007. ( Barbara Steiner)

Editor: Barbara Steiner. Texts: Brigitte Huck, Patrizia Mania, Maria Anna Potocka, Domenico Scudero, Heidi Stecker, Barbara Steiner, Oana Tănase, Franciska Zólyom. Publisher: jovis Verlag GmbH, Berlin. Generously supported by: BMUKK, GfZK Leipzig and Landschaft des Wissens, Klagenfurt

Isabella Hollauf was born 1956 in St. Georgen/Lav. (Austria). She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. Since 2000 conceptual photography on questions related to the transformation of leisure- and recreation facilities.

Solo exhibitions: Museum of Contemporary Art, Leipzig; Institute of Contemporary Art, Dunaújváros; Bunkier Sztuki, Cracow; Museo Laboratorio di Arte Contemporanea, Rome.

Silvia Eiblmayr lives and works in Vienna. She holds a phD in art history and works as a curator in the field of contemporary art.