His strong interest in environmental protection and sustainability are recurring themes in Brandl's artistic practice. Herbert Brandl, who is one of the best known contemporary Austrian artists, creates atmospheric color spaces with his abstract visual worlds. Form, color and light as material and method of art are central to his work. In Brandl's abstracted forms, landscapes and elements of nature seem to emerge again and again—thus his paintings are suspended between abstraction and figuration. In the context of the exhibition, Jordan Troeller and Daniela Zyman will discuss the urgency of the age of the Anthropocene, as well as the relevance of alternative artistic approaches to knowledge production, which allow us to search for models to healing the ecological crisis outside of Western thought structures.
After a short introduction to the topic, Jordan Troeller and Daniela Zyman will exchange views on various strategies and examples before opening the discussion to further questions. The event will be held in English.
Dr. Jordan Troeller (*1985 USA, lives in Graz) is university assistant for modern art at the Institute of Art History at the University of Graz. She is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, the Whitney Independent Study Program, New York, and Harvard University, where she earned her doctorate with a dissertation on the photographic mediation of objectivity and embodiment at the Bauhaus. She has curated at the MIT List Visual Arts Center and the Goethe-Institut Boston. Her writings have appeared in numerous publications, including Art Journal, ARTNews, The Burlington Magazine, OCTOBER and Women's Art Journal, as well as in the most recent anthologies "Bauhaus Bodies: Gender, Sexuality, and Body Culture in Modernism's Legendary Art School" (2019) and "Textile Moderne / Textile Modernism" (2019).
Dr. Daniela Zyman (*1964 Vienna, lives in Vienna) is chief curator and artistic director of Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (TBA21), a private foundation founded by Francesca Thyssen-Bornemisza in Vienna in 2002. Between 1995 and 2001 Zyman was chief curator of the MAK – Austrian Museum of Applied Arts / Contemporary Art in Vienna. From 2000 to 2003 she worked as artistic director of the Künstlerhaus, Vienna and as director of A9 Forum Transeuropa. Zyman holds an MA in Art History from the University of Vienna and an MFA from New York's Columbia University, and a PhD from the University of Art in Linz. She has taught at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, and has edited, among other publications, "Ernesto Neto and the Huni Kuin – Aru Kuxipa-Sacred Secret", "Allan Sekula – OKEANOS" and "Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary: The Commissions Book".