Produced on the occasion of Josef Strau’s exhibition at Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf, 3 September–22 November, 2020, the first comprehensive institutional solo exhibition by Strau in Germany.

The exhibition brought together objects and text production made between 1991 and 2020 as an attempt to create an autobiographical depot, as if these objects were simply the result of time or of durations of psychological states, such as fear and anxiety, and sometimes also of desire. Strau’s complex, nested retrospective vessel contains, in addition to everyday stories, a random selection of objects representing, among other things, tigers, temples, tears, fences, children’s letters, angels, icons, and cured turtles. The most recent work is a spider clock, The 13 Hour Cymbal Spiderclock that exhales the Dreams, which announces a new time beyond the usual twelve hours.

Produced on the occasion of the exhibition The IMAGE in Singular at Amer Gallery, Vienna, 27 October–28 November, 1987. Including the artists; Fareed Armaly, Alan Belcher, Larry Johnson, David Robbins, Gerwald Rockenschaub, Wolfgang Schrom, Josef Strau and Heimo Zobernig.

Produced on the occasion of the awarding of the Wolfgang-Hahn Prize to Henrik Olesen, 17 April–29 July, 2012 at the Museum Ludwig, Köln. With texts by Josef Strau and Carla Cugini.

Produced on the occasion of Josephine Pryde’s exhibition Serena at Kunstverein Braunschweig, 28 April–10 June, 2001.

Pryde’s work attacks stock photographic aesthetic by technically reworking and reconfiguring images and by addressing the conditions of their display. The surfaces of glossy fashion photographs are disrupted by the insertion of aluminium tubes, which emphasise their ‘objectness’ and their status as artworks. Colourful photoshop juxtapositions of MRI scans of the human foetus and macro-lens desertscapes are unnervingly loaded. They refer to the history of darkroom experimentation and to contemporary medical-imaging techniques. Pryde doesn’t reject the language of photographic imagery, rather she adopts it and layers it up. Her guinea pig portraits are inspired by ‘cute pet photography’ but her choice of subject conjures associations with laboratory research.

Texts by Pamela M. Lee, Pauline van Mourik Broekman and Josef Strau.

Published on the occasion of the exhibition Shandyismus, Autorschaft als Genre curated by Helmut Draxler, Secession, Vienna, 22 February–15 April, 2007.

The exhibition Shandyismus. Autorschaft als Genre refers to Laurence Sterne’s novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman from the 18th century. It will focus on Shandyism as a phenomenon or position, reflecting the diversity of points of contact with the media. A number of existing art works will be shown that express the methodological idiom of Shandyism. At the same time, artists have been invited to develop a “Shandyesque intervention” for the exhibition.

Artists: Monika Baer, Georg Baselitz, Bernadette Corporation, Max Bill, Marcel Broodthaers, Marcel Duchamp, Jack Goldstein, Gareth James, Sergej Jensen, Chuck Jones, David Jourdan, Jutta Koether, Louise Lawler, Olia Lialina und Dragan Espenschied, Robert Frank, Martin Kippenberger, Michael Krebber, Christian Philipp Müller, Michael Schuster, Josef Strau, Franz West sowie , Diedrich Diederichsen, Michael Dreyer, Clemens Krümmel, Franz Reitinger, Drehli Robnik, André Rottmann, Astrit Schmidt-Burkhardt, Tanja Widmann.

Texts: Diedrich Diederichsen, Helmut Draxler, Michael Dreyer, Clemens Krümmel, Shaun Regan, Franz Reitinger, Drehli Robnik, André Rottmann, Astrit Schmidt-Burkhardt, Peter de Voogd, Tanja Widmann.