Touching is expressly encouraged! This exhibition transforms art into a sensory experience. Sculptures, objects, and installations invite hands-on exploration—normally something off limits. How do Tone Fink’s seemingly fragile yet powerful paper sculptures actually feel? What happens when visitors interact with one of Cornelius Kolig’s mechanically powered objects? The exhibition demonstrates how art touches us emotionally, intellectually, and physically.
Viennese Actionism and Haptic Art
Beginning with Austrian art from the 1960s and 1970s, the exhibition traces a trajectory to current artistic positions. During the 1960s, art moved away from traditional forms of painting and sculpture, exploring new modes of body-centered expression. Viennese Actionism was essential in shaping this transformation: art became physical.
In Adolf Frohner’s actionist works, the physical process of creation plays a central role. He tore, slashed, and deformed materials that were previously foreign to art. The artist’s physical exertion is inscribed in the object itself. Frohner’s work “AMVX” (1963) combines wood, a mattress, and iron, forging a link between everyday objects and artistic reflection on the human body and its perception.
Tactile Art
The 1960s saw the emergence of so-called tactile art, in which experiencing artworks through touch and direct interaction became central. A prominent figure in this movement was Cornelius Kolig. In his work, he explores, among other things, the boundaries between tactile perception and mechanical movement. Contact between moving parts—such as rapidly rotating elements—triggers immediate bodily sensations, opening up an additional sensory dimension for the viewer.
Tap and Touch Cinema
VALIE EXPORT’s actions of the 1960s were groundbreaking in the context of feminism. With her iconic Tapp und Tastkino (Tap and Touch Cinema), she examined the ways in which the female body is perceived. The audience’s touching of the artist was both an artistic performance and provocation—a radical gesture that has influenced generations.
Renate Bertlmann, another important representative of Austrian action and haptic art, employed fragile materials such as glass and textiles to explore emotional and physical states. Her work “Glasherz” (1986) has become a symbol of vulnerability, fragility, and physicality.
Art to Touch and Experience
Gudrun Kampl’s padded velvet sculptures, such as “Ekstase” and “Spinne”, create a charged interplay between space, body, and emotion. Tone Fink experiments with paper as “skin”: through scratching, folding, and sewing, new tangible bodily forms emerge. “Busengewand” plays with physicality and humor, transforming the wearer into a sculptural shell. His series “Begreifbare Impulse” challenges the sense of touch, with paper surfaces ranging from rough, perforated, hard, and angular to soft. The most recent works in the exhibition are by Stefan Glettler, who investigates the perception of movement, energy, and static forms.
Actionist relics, feminist reflections on the body, fragile paper forms, mechanically powered objects, and soft fabric sculptures bring the diversity of haptic art to life at the Forum Frohner.
Artists: Renate Bertlmann, VALIE EXPORT, Tone Fink, Adolf Frohner, Stefan Glettler, Gudrun Kampl, Cornelius Kolig
Curator: Elisabeth Voggeneder