The Museum of Modern Art Ludwig Foundation Vienna (mumok) is concluding the 14-year tenure of General Director Karola Kraus with "Shh," a comprehensive exhibition featuring works by Upper Austrian artist Tobias Pils. Kraus described the show as a "crowning conclusion" to her directorship during Friday's announcement.
Kraus began her tenure at the Vienna Museum of Modern Art in 2011 with an exhibition of Viennese artist Florian Pumhösl, who was born in 1971. Fourteen years later, she is ending her leadership with another mid-career show featuring an Austrian artist of the same generation - Tobias Pils, born in 1971 in Linz. "He ranks among the most exciting positions of the present time," Kraus said during Thursday's press tour. "His work is characterized by a deep engagement with the history of painting while simultaneously seeking confrontation with the present."
The exhibition spans two levels in a labyrinthine visitor route, presenting a retrospective of the past ten years of Pils' creative output. Curator Manuela Ammer explained that the artist also views this retrospective as a preview of future work. Regarding the title, Ammer noted: "'Shh' is not a word found in the dictionary, but rather an onomatopoetic exclamation. 'Shh' has to do with communication, with the body and atmosphere - everything that is also important in his work."
Visitors are greeted by a projection of drawings onto the white Zobernig cube that crosses the foyer, which is decorated with elements including a starry sky. The exhibition presents motifs of trees and animals, figures reminiscent of death, and intertwined lovers that visitors encounter throughout their journey. Ammer observed that "one could almost think that these are three different exhibitions," noting the difficulty in finding a common thread in Pils' work, which Kraus perceives as featuring movements from abstraction to representational art, from black-and-white to color.
The exhibition level minus two reminds visitors how Pils began his career as a draftsman, whose reduced line sought to mark a path through the thicket of worldly impressions. The 1993 series "Kopfland" (Headland), comprising ten sheets created in collaboration with Friederike Mayröcker and displayed on small tables in the exhibition's far corner, is the only body of work that leads entirely back to the beginnings of his career. The 39 pencil drawings of the "Alphabet" series, created almost three decades later, impressively demonstrate that drawing has always been an important medium for the son of publisher Richard Pils. Horses and other animals, figures and arabesques reveal in their fantasy a proximity to Günter Brus.
In the adjacent and upper rooms, painting dominates along with the search for coherent approaches. Pils repeatedly draws from art history, from Bruegel to Franz West. Visitors encounter still lifes in which the artist tries his hand at the genre with a wink, pseudo-architectural designs for trees, and paintings in which Pils, following a bicycle accident, deals with damaged bodies, cartoon-like figures, and variations of the biblical fall from grace under the apple tree. A massive wall painting applied by Pils around four masks hanging on the wall as a temporary artwork is essentially a large drawing.
"While I paint, I don't think about content at all, but purely formally," Pils once noted. Ammer attempted to serve as a pathfinder through an oeuvre in which "content and form constantly exchange places," and where the switch from painting on the floor to stretched canvas marked a turning point. According to the museum, "Pils has developed his own visual language with great consistency and sensitivity, which eludes quick readability and instead relies on the power of ambivalences."
For those wanting to understand these ambivalences firsthand, two exhibition tours with the artist are recommended. On November 13 at 6:00 PM, Pils will lead a tour together with curator Ammer as part of Vienna Art Week. Five days later (November 18, 5:30 PM), prominent art historian Bice Curiger will join the duo. Kraus was honored in early September with the Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and Art, First Class. "For me, this award is an honoring recognition and a dignified conclusion to my 15-year tenure as director of mumok," she said. "I am handing over a house that has been completely renovated in all areas with an incredibly well-positioned and committed team - the best prerequisites for a successful future of the museum that is very close to my heart." Her successor will be Fatima Hellberg. Personally, Kraus plans to "simply enjoy life" after the end of her tenure.
The exhibition "Tobias Pils. Shh" opens Friday, September 26 at 7:00 PM at mumok in Vienna's Museumsquartier and runs from September 27, 2025, through April 12, 2026. The museum is open Tuesday through Sunday from 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM.
