Henrik Olesen: An Exhibition Exploring Gender Politics and Social Conventions in Art

This exhibition features the work of Henrik Olesen, who examines everyday conventions and their effects on gender politics. The exhibition draws from various materials to explore the stigmatization and criminalization of homosexuality through appropriation, manipulation, and contextual shifts.

In his practice, Henrik Olesen questions everyday conventions and their gender-political effects, drawing on both current and historical materials. These include visual and textual representations from architecture, industrial history, penal systems, law, capital distribution, natural sciences, and art history. Through appropriation, manipulation, and contextual shifts, Olesen addresses the stigmatization, criminalization, and marginalization of homosexuality. A significant element is the politicization and appropriation of history and its representations, often through minimalist interventions in exhibition architecture and public space, or through extensive internet research. Using collage techniques and sculptural methods, his works open up hegemonic iconographies that often exclude homosexual bodies. At the Secession, Olesen presents a selection of works that articulate production as an aesthetic and meaning-generating, yet adaptable process that normatively controls our actions. He integrates gay bodies into spaces and interiors from the turn of the 20th century, highlighting the societal repression of homosexuality and the simultaneous invocation of heterosexual family concepts as structures preserving society. The display case in the passage to the Graphic Cabinet gathers photographs and depictions of the Secession from the early 20th century, augmented with scenes of arrests or naked male bodies undergoing medical examinations. This display case, itself a postmodern quote, functions both as a display for homosexual desire and as a symbol of a history of selection and censorship, with references to Austrian penal code sections concerning the "unnatural sexual acts" with individuals under 18.

Information and tickets for exhibitions can be found via the provided link. The Secession is open Tuesday to Sunday from 10 AM to 6 PM. Specific ticketing details for this exhibition are not explicitly detailed beyond general access information to the venue and its shows.