Whether deliberately or as unintentional provocation: art works repeatedly cause heated debates. With the exhibition “Scandal Normal?” the OK devotes attention to the mechanisms of public outrage, showing a chronology of the most widely discussed art scandals in Austria. From 1960 to the present.
“SCANDAL NORMAL?” shows art in the distorted image of digital public spheres of outrage and investigates the possibilities and ambivalences of visual art in the age of media. The exhibition offers an unveiled look at the sensual effect of controversial art works – and dissects reasons for outrage as a mirror of a society in between voyeurism, beer-drinking blather, and digitalization.
Selected art works and carefully staged archive material show the subversive power of visual communication and question the conflict surrounding distorted media images as means to an end for opinion-makers and marketing mechanisms.
Much ado about Nitsch! “Scandal Normal?” shows the multifaceted overall art work in the mirror of the boulevard and seeks potentials for social transformation in the economy of attention for naked skin. Sex Sells!
Globalization and migration expand the view of the lines of fracture between art, culture, and their contexts. Between controversial prohibitions against coverings and fights over eyesores, the exhibition “Scandal Normal?” shows the public, not least of all on the basis of a comprehensive chronology of the greatest scandals of recent decades, the possibility of grasping art as a means to continually reexamine our own canon of values.