Model Modernisms

Model Modernisms originates from a concern for the remaining effects of different periods of utopian modernism—understood simultaneously as moments of formal and social transformation. While modernism as a set of aesthetic inventions appears historic and complete, and modernity as a period of dramatic social change seems superseded by other forces, the social and formal products of these earlier moments of utopian thought still define our everyday routines as well as our aesthetic judgments.

The artists in Model Modernisms engage subjects as diverse as the decade of civil rights and sexual revolution in America, utopian communities in the American West, the adaptations of pre-war designs in post-war socialist vernacular architecture and design, the uneasy relationship between modern aesthetics and pre-modern ornamentation, as well as the buried legacies of non-geometric abstractions in the development of a modern formal aesthetic.

Model Modernisms is supported, in part, by the Austrian Cultural Forum New York, the British Council, Etant Données, the Mondriaan Foundation, and Pro Helvetia.

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Model Modernisms
Main Space

mit Carol Bove, Nathan Coley, Olaf Nicolai, Mai-Thu Perret, Florian Pumhösl, de Rijke / de Rooij, Bojan Sarcevic