Digging and Piling Up

Marking the inauguration of Graz's Joanneum Quarter, and the new installations of the Neue Galerie Graz, a new exhibition surveys the work of Austrian architect and designer Hans Hollein. Running until 9 April, the The Universal Artist Hans Hollein looks to explore the phenomenal variety in the Pritzker Prize winner's work, considering his exploits as an architect, artist, designer, theoretician, exhibition designer and eminent teacher.

To do this, a wide-ranging network of relationships in terms of form and content are unfolded throughout the exhibition. Hollein makes no distinction between category and area, firm in his belief that "everything affects everything" and his view is that architecture exists as a symbol, illusion, space, idea, cell, capsule, ritual and work of art. He has stated that "architects should get away from the idea that shaping the environment must be connected with building alone."

In accordance with Hollein's thought process, the exhibition does not attempt to reconstruct nor to follow his work in a chronological sequence, but rather to reveal phenomenological frames of reference. Presenting in part, ideas that reach far back often existing in the form of sketches that turn out to play a key role much later on. These differences in time are transparent in the exhibition and rendered comprehensible. Starting from the principle of "Digging and Piling Up", which Hollein has formulated as the basis for architecture, the exhibition attempts to trace the key demands made by Hollein and their application in his work.

The Universal Artist Hans Hollein
Neue Galerie Graz
Joanneum Quarter, Graz
Through 9 April 2012