The Kunsthalle Wien presents a major institutional survey of Richard Hawkins for the first time in Austria and his first such exhibition in over a decade. The exhibition brings together more than 100 works from nine series produced over the past three decades, including paintings, collages, sculptures, and videos.

Hawkins’s practice is grounded in desire and the pleasure of looking and is shaped by a highly referential collage-based approach that weaves together art history, literature, theater, and popular culture. The exhibition traces his often obsessive engagement with subjects such as ancient sculpture, subcultures, artists’ biographies, and internet memes. It spans early image collages, ceramic works, and acrylic paintings through to AI-processed videos described as “queer exorcisms.” Complementing these works, Hawkins uses large-scale wallpapers made from enlarged images to layer and juxtapose different phases of his practice.

Key bodies of work include a dark reimagining of the biblical story of Salome; studies of artists such as Tatsumi Hijikata, Antonin Artaud, and Forrest Bess; and more recent, vividly colored paintings of Hollywood stars. The latter combine paparazzi photographs with art-historical references, notably to Pierre Bonnard.

Richard Hawkins: Potentialities is organized in cooperation with the Kestner Gesellschaft in Hanover, where the exhibition will be shown from late April 2026.