Tickets

CABINET EXHIBITION

TO SHOE OR NOT TO SHOE. Warhol and others 

Birgit Jürgenssen, Aschenbrödel, 1976, Heidi Horten Collection © Estate of Birgit Jürgenssen/Bildrecht, Wien, 2026

Andy Warhol, Á La Recherche du Shoe Perdu by Andy Warhol. Shoe Poems by Rolph Pomeray (Umschlagblatt) ca. 1955, Heidi Horten Collection © The Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts/Bildrecht, Wien, 2026

Gudrun Kampl, Vorwärtsschnitt, 2021 Courtesy Heidi Horten Collection © Die Künstlerin

21 October, 2026 - 18 April, 2027

 

Andy Warhol’s graphic series À la recherche du Shoe perdu was created in 1955 in the context of his commission to design weekly shoe advertisements for The New York Times. The project resulted in more than a dozen drawings, to which the poet Ralph Pomeroy added witty literary allusions; Warhol later compiled them into a portfolio.

Taking this series as its point of departure, the cabinet presentation is devoted to the women’s shoe as fetish object, projection surface, and site of feminist critique. Alongside Andy Warhol, artists such as Birgit Jürgenssen, Gudrun Kampl, and Lena Henke present their own interpretations of the shoe, interrogating it as a symbol of desire, discipline, and gender roles.

Curated by Rolf H. Johannsen.

EXHIBITION

Play Date

Alexander Calder, Untitled (Toy Train), um 1946, Heidi Horten Collection, (c) Bildrecht, Wien, 2026

Johanna Dumet, KING FOR A DAY, FOOL FOR A LIFETIME, 2025, Courtesy Johanna Dumet und König Galerie, Berlin

CADAVRE EXQUIS : Max Morise, André Breton, Max Ernst, Marie-Berthe Aurenche, 17.03.1927, Courtesy Galerie 1900-2000, David et Marcel Fleiss, Paris

Andy Warhol, Chess Player, ca. 1954, Heidi Horten Collection, (c) The Andy Warhol Foundation of Visual Arts/Bildrecht, Wien, 2026

Keith Haring,  Acrobats, 1986, Heidi Horten Collection, (c) The Keith Haring Foundation

Maruša Sagadin, Hoop (Cyan-Orange), 2023 / Hoop (Green), 2023, Courtesy Christine König Galerie, Vienna, and the artist, Photo: Markus Gradwohl / Kunstraum Niederösterreich

Playing—that's one of the best things there is.

Marcel Duchamp1

The exhibition Play Date explores the connections between art and play and examines the various forms that playfulness can take in artistic works. Playful strategies—such as working with rules and experimental setups, as well as experimentation, rule-breaking, and chance—emerge as essential aspects of 20th- and 21st-century art.

Play Date allows visitors to experience play within the interplay of idea and variation, action and interaction, as well as free and competitive play. While artistic explorations of chess, ball games, card games, and dice games engage with and subvert the mechanics and logic of these classic game forms, instructions for action and participatory installations invite visitors to become part of the art themselves. Another focal point of the exhibition is performative role-playing, in which artists explore alternative forms of the self.

1Alfred Kreymborg: „Why Marcel Duchamp Calls Hash a Picture“, in: Boston Evening Transcript, 19.9.1915, zit. n. Serge Stauffer: Marcel Duchamp. Interviews und Statements, Ostfildern-Ruit, 1992, S. 13.

19 March - 5 September, 2027

 

As a shared activity and experience, play—far beyond childhood—is a central social practice. In addition to its potential for shared enjoyment, the exhibition also highlights the conditions of participation and exclusion. It does not ask about winners and losers, but rather about the prerequisites of play: Who is allowed to play, and by whose rules is the game played? The exhibition views play as a communal process in which new forms of interaction and participation can be explored. Play Date opens up spaces for play in two senses—as an artistic practice as well as a field of social possibilities.

Featuring works from the Heidi Horten Collection as well as international loans by Eleanor Antin, Rasheed Araeen, John M. Armleder, John Baldessari, André Breton, Alexander Calder, Lygia Clark, Céline Condorelli, Marcel Duchamp, Fischli/Weiss, Eva Grubinger, Keith Haring, Benjamin Hirte, Carsten Höller, Anna Jermolaewa, Matthias Krinzinger, Palle Nielsen, Yoko Ono, Maruša Sagadin, Takako Saito, Cindy Sherman, Philipp Timischl, Sofie Thorsen, Kay Walkowiak, Andy Warhol, Erwin Wurm, and others.

A catalog will be published to accompany the exhibition.

Curated by Véronique Abpurg.