Founded in 1993 in Copenhagen, the artist collective SUPERFLEX is currently staging their third project at the Kunsthaus Graz within the space of three years. Following on from their cash machine sculpture C.R.E.A.M. in 2017 and Free Shopin 2018, this year sees the installation of Number of Visitors, focusing on the economic conditions and "success criteria" set for cultural institutions. Mounted above the entrance, a manual counter displays current visitor numbers to the Kunsthaus since 1st January 2019.
Number of Visitors was Jens Haaning and SUPERFLEX’s contribution for Populism, an exhibition that took place in 2005 at Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt, National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo, and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. The project consists of a large counter mounted on the façades of the participating art institutions. The counter shows the number of visitors. So the installation aptly illustrates the conditions and criteria most cultural institutions have to meet for success today—the more visitors they attract, the better their chances are for funding and acceptance. 2019, Number of Visitors, is installed above an entrance of Kunsthaus Graz and will show the number of visits since 1 January 2019. Thirteen years after its first iteration, it has not lost any of its relevance.
Following on from C.R.E.A.M. (2017) and Free Shop (2018), this is now the third project realised by SUPERFLEX at the Kunsthaus Graz. Over a period of five years, a number of projects are set to explore the fetishisation of money, the rules of economic conditions and power structures. Here the artist collective deliberately refer back to the Five-Year Plan principle, a tool used for planning economic activities in countries with Marxist-Socialist policies. 2020 will see the staging of the SUPERSHOW project, while in 2021 the art collective will complete their series with a solo exhibition.
