The Austrian Cultural Forum New York presents the publication Artists Talk, a collection of more than 40 conversations which Gerald Matt has conducted with internationally renowned artists in the course of his work as a director and curator. Featuring interviews with Matthew Barney, Urs Fischer, Susan Philipsz, Barbara Kruger, Maurizio Cattelan, and many others, the book reflects and confirms the author’s conviction that interviews conducted within the art system are particularly suitable as an equal platform of exchange for creators and distributors of art. The featured artists confirm this point of view with their readiness to answer questions and to enter a dialog – they even embrace the opportunity to criticize or correct some of the curatorial interpretations of their work.

The book presentation will comprise a panel of selected artists whose interviews are featured in Artists Talk. They will discuss with Gerald Matt the not-always-smooth, but necessarily symbiotic relationship between artists and curators: An artist’s career is nearly unthinkable without the support, expertise and ideas of curators in the contemporary art world. Conversely, curators are deeply dependent on the artist’s collaboration and trust. Excellent and successful shows are frequently the result of an intense and respectful cooperation between the artist and the curator. Consequently, the liminal role of the curator as both communicator and creator, at the borderline between artistic and curatorial work, always has to be renegotiated and redefined.

PARTICIPANTS: Gerald Matt, Clarina Bezzola, Peter McGough, and others.

Clarina Bezzola, born in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1970, is a performance artist, sculptor, painter and trained opera singer who graduated from Parsons School of Design, New York. Her work explores the delicate psychological boundaries between the self and the society. Clarina lives and works in New York. She has had solo exhibitions and performances in the United States and throughout Europe.

Gerald Matt, born 1958, is an Austrian cultural manager. Until March 2012, he was the director of the Kunsthalle Wien. Today, he works as a consultant to a cultural management company and teaches as a visiting professor at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna.

Gerald Matt studied law, business administration, and the history of art at the University of Innsbruck. In 1981, he received his doctorate in law. In 1985 he completed his BA in economics at the Institute of Strategic Management with a social and economic thesis on cultural management. Between 1991 and 1992 he worked in the Austrian Federal Ministry for Education, Science, and Culture in the Department of International Biennials, international exhibitions and cultural policy issues. Together with Thomas Häusle and Wolfgang Fetz, he founded the Vorlarlberger art club Magazin 4 in Bregenz in 1992. In 1994, Matt became the General Secretary and two years later the director of the Kunsthalle Wien. The New York Times referred to the Kunsthalle Wien in 2001 as a ‘Mecca of electronic arts’.

McDermott & McGough consists of visual artists David McDermott and Peter McGough. Peter McGough, was born in 1958 in Syracuse, and studied at Syracuse University, New York in 1976. Their artistic collaboration started in New York City in 1980. Best known for their work in painting, photography, sculpture and film, they currently split their time between Dublin and New York City.

McDermott & McGough are best known for using alternative historical processes in their photography, including the techniques of cyanotype, gum bichromate, salt, tri color carbo, platinum and palladium. Among the subjects they approach are popular art and culture, religion, medicine, advertising, time, fashion and sexual behavior.

McDermott & McGough’s work has appeared in solo and group exhibitions at such institutions as Cheim & Read, Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont, Pat Hearn Gallery, Massimo Audiello Gallery, Galleria Gian Enzo Sperone, Sperone Westwater, Galerie Bruno Bischofberger, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Whitney Museum of American Art, New Museum of Contemporary Art, Centre Pompidou, Kunsthalle Wien, Manezh Moscow and the Irish Museum of Modern Art. Previous exhibitions also include the Whitney Biennial, New York, in 1987, 1991 and 1995. McDermott & McGough mounted a mid-career retrospective at the Provincial Museum voor Moderne Kunst, Oostende, Belgium.

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