HANS IM GLÜCK

Anyone visiting the Kunstraum Niederoesterreich on 11 September 2014 will find it empty. The exhibition is open but the works are not there. Stacks of posters start off a murmur: they talk about 13 fairytale expeditions that are starting the next day. Our artists commence at various points in Lower Austria, penetrate a natural and urban thicket that they have chosen themselves, and a week later reach the Kunstraum in the heart of Vienna. They bring encounters, rumors and artistic prey from their ramble with them. They imitate Grimm’s Hans and entrust themselves to the path for seven days. Hans is the hero of our exhibition, because in the best sense of the word he is simple-hearted. He is a slave neither to the past or the future, so that he belongs completely to the present. He respects his impulses and changes what he carries with him. He does this without any strategy, he goes step by step, without the foresight of the last result of his metamorphoses. People of the arts are familiar with this process, because it precedes numerous works. And nevertheless Hans must remain a stranger, because few so easily overcome the distance between wealth and well-being as Grimm’s returnee does. The actual provocation that maintains the fairytales‘ tension, however, is hidden in the end of the text: the Brothers Grimm let Hans go. Everything we tend to accuse him of – naivety, credulity, wastefulness – never affect him. Hans can remain in his good fortune to the end, while we set out every day to recover ours. Our artists, too, are on the point of departure: they are going on a journey and allow their metamorphosis to take place. The exhibition “Hans im Glück” is intended to retain the chance of an open outcome for these metamorphoses. Thus we, the curators, can also be excited about the findings and the rumors that will reach the Kunstraum Niederoesterreich.

curated by: Katharina Blaas, Ursula Hübner, Christiane Krejs, Esther Strauß