This exhibition will feature photographs and video from six individual and one duo of contemporary Austrian artists who explore the latent darkness and insanity hidden inside bodies and cities - carrying on the tradition of psychoanalysis born from the apex of urban culture of the House of Habsburg. Many of the artists will be exhibiting their work for the first time in Japan, including pieces produced by two of them while in residence at Tokyo Wonder Site Aoyama.

The House of Habsburg established the Austrian Empire in Central Europe. Its highly refined court culture, centered on Vienna, was the height of urban culture. With the decline of the empire, a new school of questioning was born that examined the profundity of the human body and mind. Its leading protagonists were Sigmund Freud and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Freudian psychoanalysis formulates and interprets patients' unconscious emotional turmoil through free association techniques and verbalization of imagination and dreams. Contepmorary artists represent this turmoil in the language of imagery. They visualize the unconscious emotional turmoil in individuals, their bodies and cities, and examine the psychic relationship between people and their bodies. They also echo this concept in photographic and video media using the naked self placed in public and architectural spaces. This view of the latent darkness and insanity hidden inside bodies and cities melts the boundary between the internal and external worlds, depicting our raw human form and desires. This approach shakes the human conscience to the bone.

Organize：
Tokyo Metropolitan Foundation for History and Culture, Tokyo Wonder Site
Co-organize：
Austrian Federal Ministry for Education, Arts and Culture
Support：
Austrian Embassy / Cultural Forum
This exhibition is touring to Contemporary Art Museum Kumamoto,2010/9/18 -11/28
Venue：
TWS Shibuya
Artist：
Bitter / Weber
Maria Hahnenkamp
Aglaia Konrad
Dorit Margreiter
Ursula Mayer
Markus Schinwald
Andrea Witzmann