FULLY BOOKED!

The exhibition GROW uses the tree subject to show how the power of convention has been growing from the Middle Ages to the year 2022.
What is also growing (“Grow”) in trees and their artistic treatment is shown by the exclusive guided tour through the exhibition (The “Myth” Tree and the Convention of “Order”). Namely, the influence of tree representations not only by social and art historical conventions or their change, but also by their institutional environment. In this process, “orders” are mutually challenged, even broken, contents are recoded and myths are newly constructed. Quite in the sense of Challenging Orders, the theme of this year’s Vienna Art Week. One could say that the theme “tree” grows beyond itself. This is demonstrated by the example of the ancient motif of Apollo and Daphne. Two portraits of this variation on the theme of the “tree” can be found in Baroque halls of the two palaces of the Belvedere. In addition, the GROW exhibition presents a work by Rona Pondick in the corresponding room of the Lower Belvedere, and the Carlone Contemporary exhibition presents another in the Upper Belvedere. The order in Pondick’s work challenges that of myth and its traditional reading in the Belvedere’s historic houses – Challenging Orders.
Literally several steps further in deconstructing traditional readings of tree metaphors, the tour “The “Myth” Tree and the Convention of “Order”” takes the next stop. Outside the institutional background, it leads into a studio for a conversation with philosopher, poet and artist Christian Zillner. There it is about a radically new interpretation of the paradisiacal tree representation and the Apollo-Daphne myth, however, as mentioned at the beginning, nevertheless within the framework of convention and at most as a progressive-evolutionary concept.

Registration required (no later than November 18): registration@viennaartweek.at