Discover Siggi Hofer's Immersive Still Life Installation at the Secession

Siggi Hofer's 'Still Life' is an immersive, walk-through installation created in dialogue with the Secession's architecture. The exhibition reflects on the complexity of contemporary reality and invites visitors to actively engage with its disorienting and multifaceted nature. It builds upon the artist's previous work 'gift basket' and explores themes of relationships, identity, and memory through the lens of the still life genre.

Siggi Hofer's 'Still Life' exhibition at the Secession presents an immersive, large-scale installation designed as a walk-through artwork. Conceived in dialogue with the Secession's distinctive architecture, the exhibition aims to mirror the disorienting and complex reality of our present time. Visitors are invited to become active participants, navigating the space to orient themselves and construct meaning. This exhibition is a direct continuation of Hofer's earlier work 'gift basket', which used the motif of a gift basket to explore themes of relationships, family, identity, and memory. By referencing the genre of still life, Hofer engages with a familiar topos, focusing on aesthetic questions of composition and color. The exhibition showcases Hofer's versatility across various media, incorporating diverse details, subtle gestures, and works from different periods. It includes an outdoor installation and an artist's book presented as a newspaper, utilizing the 'Deutsch-Gotisch' typeface reminiscent of the 'Dolomiten' newspaper from his childhood. His literary texts, often created in parallel to his exhibitions, reveal the profound influence of autobiographical reflections, memory, childhood, identity, and emancipation on his practice. These texts oscillate between sober analysis and humor, offering raw honesty and ambiguity. Self-referentiality and citations that allude to earlier works recur throughout the exhibition. The core of the installation features approximately 400 wooden beams, lacquered in pastel tones, alongside new paintings. The artist emphasizes that nothing touches the building's envelope; elements are either suspended from the ceiling or placed on the floor, continuing his playful critique of exhibition conventions and art presentation. The grid-painted images, inspired by graphic design and rendered in vibrant colors, depict animal and plant motifs, as well as everyday objects. As viewers move through the installation, changing perspectives reveal new juxtapositions and interpretive possibilities. The motifs are drawn from various sources, including self-citations and reactions to other artists' works. Certain motifs, such as a suit, a football, or an eagle, can be interpreted within the context of patriarchal and nationalist stereotypes. Conversely, elements like the butterfly or the rose, along with the exhibition's soft color palette, offer a counterpoint, though the artist deliberately leaves interpretation open. Hofer's invocation of writer Herbert Achternbusch's quote, "Art comes from counter-argument," underscores his resistant stance. The use of a raster grid for image generation, reminiscent of childhood craft patterns, serves as a strategy for 'unlearning' artistic virtuosity to focus on content. The one-meter-long wooden beams are not only vibrantly colored but also partially adorned with pencil markings. Steel cables function as hanging devices, enhanced with decorative wooden bead compositions, exemplifying a crossover strategy between high and low art, and craft. By repeating, overlapping, and recombining motifs, Hofer creates a dense network of relationships that challenges simplistic interpretations. A performative aspect is introduced through three workstations where new works are created and added to the exhibition during its run. The built environment, particularly the city as a complex social fabric, a site for utopian projections, aspiration, and escape, has long been a motif in Hofer's work. Since childhood, he has been drawn to the urban context, as evidenced by an early childhood drawing displayed in the exhibition. This is complemented by later fictional cityscapes, representing a dialogue between the adult artist and his younger self. A key image, found on the invitation card and artist book cover, is a graphic from a children's encyclopedia that fascinated Hofer: an apocalyptic scene of an earthquake with burning houses and cars being swallowed by the earth. This image sets a foundational tone for the exhibition, despite its otherwise playful presentation, emphasizing that catastrophe, though perhaps occurring elsewhere, is a reality.

Information regarding tickets can be found via a link to the ticketing platform. The page does not provide specific pricing or booking details directly, but directs visitors to the official ticketing portal for admission information related to exhibitions at the Secession. 'Heut geöffnet' and operating hours (di-so / 10-18 Uhr) are also provided, indicating general museum access times during the exhibition period.