Description
The term Context art (German: Kontextkunst) was introduced through the seminal exhibition and an accompanying publication Kontext Kunst. The Art of the 90s curated by Peter Weibel at the Neue Galerie im Künstlerhaus Graz (Austria) in 1993 (02.10.–07.11.1993).
Both exhibition and publication aimed to establish grounds for recognizing a new form of artistic practice emerging in the early 1990s. The presentation displayed different approaches though all shared an interest in the use of methods of contextualization to reveal connections between the art works and their conditions of production, whether these were formal, social, or ideologically defined. Institutional critique, feminist positions, later also critiques of precarious economic conditions and issues of globalization, all closely related to social and political changes, became relevant subjects of artistic production. Read more ↗
Key Artists
Peter Weibel
Austrian curator, theorist, and media artist who introduced and defined the exact term 'Kontextkunst' (Context Art) through his seminal 1993 exhibition and 1994 publication in Graz.
Andrea Fraser
Leading institutional critique performance artist featured in the original 1993 Kontext Kunst exhibition whose work exposes the social, economic, and ideological structures of art institutions.
Christian Philipp Müller
Prominent Swiss installation artist whose site-specific investigations into national borders and museum histories epitomized the European Context Art practice in the early 1990s.
Mark Dion
American conceptual artist included in Weibel's 1993 survey who deploys scientific categorization and archaeological methods to critique museum display systems and ecology.
Cosima von Bonin
Key participating conceptual artist in the 1993 Kontext Kunst exhibition whose multi-disciplinary works examine networks of artistic collaboration and institutional reception.
Famous Artworks
Green Border (Grüne Grenze)
Christian Philipp Müller · 1993
Austrian Pavilion, 45th Venice Biennale - Site-specific architectural intervention and performance documentation
Fun Facts
Curator Peter Weibel coined 'Kontextkunst' during his landmark 1993 Graz exhibition to define a practice where artists act as 'partisans of the real,' folding non-art social realities directly into the gallery space.
↗ Source: en.wikipedia.org
While Context Art shares intense political and academic roots with Relational Aesthetics, the term never spread widely in Anglo-American discourse simply because it was launched under the German title 'Kontextkunst' rather than its English equivalent.
↗ Source: en.wikipedia.org
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