“Every park dreams of paradise,” wrote filmmaker Derek Jarman. Paradise—as a place of longing, a promise, or a lost ideal—is a persistent image that has become deeply ingrained in both collective and personal imaginations. It is a word that evokes feelings of security, tranquility, nature, perfection, love, and happiness. And yet it remains elusive, a phantom. What remains when paradise as an idea fails?

The exhibition creates an image of the garden as an ambiguous structure that is both traversed and imagined. Behind the apparent harmony, cracks, fractures, and voids are revealed. What initially appears orderly loses its stability and seems false. The term paradise goes back to the Persian pairidaēza – a “fenced-in place.” A garden, then, a protective space. But also a place of separation.

Artists: Floriama Cândea, Ines Doujak, Kerstin von Gabain, Shinpei Kusanagi, Claudia Märzendorfer, Carlos Monléon, Ama Adoley Newman, Paul Spendier, Michael Strasser, Dorottya Vékony.

Curated by Barbara Horvath

OPENING HOURS & SPECIAL EVENTS

• Artist Talk: September 6, 2025, 4 PM
• Exhibition Opening: September 6, 2025, 5 PM
• Opening Hours: Thu – Sat, 3 – 6 PM and by appointment: welcome@partresidency.at
• Curators’ Tours: Sat, September 20, 2025, 5 PM / Fri, September 26, 2025, 5 PM

PART is a program of the Austrian Federal Ministry for Housing, Arts, Culture, Media, and Sport.