Alive Inside the Crystal is a two-part exhibition about the power and aberrations of utopias and the 20th century avant-gardes’ reverberating in our time. On the display sculpture Klimpel has created, he brings together works from fine art and visual culture that are both models and simulations of visions for and of artistic ideas of a future. In doing so, he is interconnecting various historical positions with the ‘futuristic’ architecture of Kunsthaus Graz to the display structure of the Cat Tree for the Arts. The exhibitions are framed by ‘Slogans for the Glass House’ by the novelist Paul Scheerbart, which he wrote for the architect Bruno Taut’s pavilion at the Werkbund-Expo in Cologne in 1914. The first part of the exhibition, curated by Klimpel, concentrates on representations of the built environment, while the second underscores social conditions and ideas in utopia’s aesthetics.
