Music Pavilion

As part of SHOWING STYRIA 2025 with the title Ambition & Illusion.

Music plays a central role in the pavilion positioned in front of the palace. The architecture of the pavilion takes up the baroque theatrics and the element of the garden pavilion. The flexible architecture results in performative moments that make the location appear ever-changing.

The composer Klaus Lang has explored the music composed at the Eggenberg Court and the emblems incorporated into the palace’s ceiling paintings. Emblemata served to educate and enlighten the aristocratic youth and were therefore not only intellectual riddles, but also instructions for conduct. Lang’s compositions refer to this and resonate in the pavilion in their relevance to the present day.

Instructions for action and the performativity of sculpture are essential elements in the reflections of the sculptor Erwin Wurm. This time the idea of his One Minute Sculptures and the performativity of his art in general are integrated into the context of baroque drama. The exaltation of the Baroque, which is closely related to the narcissistic society of today, unfolds in the ensemble of sculptures selected for the pavilion. The sculptures form an imaginary court society whose psychological disposition seems to have been shaken, at least here.

The curtain walls of the pavilion are dominated by a monumental digital painting by Hubert Schmalix. It runs around the entire pavilion. The partial opening and closing of the curtains heightens the character of the spectacle. The images essentially refer to digital communication – emojis. They are focused on gazes and clear gestures and, in Schmalix’s work, become instructions for action – they either instruct or attract

Hubert Schmalix
Erwin Wurm
Klaus Lang and Ārt House

The entire pavilion architecture as a curtain

Hubert Schmalix’s most recent paintings are formally extremely reduced. His depictions of people were always stereotypical or iconic. In addition to the seemingly anonymous female nudes, they were mostly archetypal figures such as Jesus Christ or, more recently, St. Stephen. They are not depicted for their own sake; their biographical or historical aspects are not the focus here. Schmalix takes a broader view of the content and poses general questions – about power relations, about the fate of the “old white man”. At the same time, it is the image patterns, the information that emanates from certain forms of representation. While most of his pictorial ideas have so far been derived from art history, Schmalix currently seems to be exploring new realms.

Emojis – elements from digital communication culture – form the basis for new pictorial inventions in his latest paintings. The monumental picture, which dominates the entire pavilion architecture as a curtain, is full of communication. The simplified body shapes have a signaling effect. The outstretched hands warn us, the eyes stare at us – theatricality, drama. An expression of baroque drama transformed into the present, of exalted behavior and the performative is evident here. The stone figures that usually populate the palace park seem to be condensed into a monumental comic in Hubert Schmalix’s painting.

With Schmalix, we are dealing with a hybrid world. This is determined less by reality than by its images.

Works of art

In order to depict the writer Balzac, Auguste Rodin decided in 1891 not to focus on the person himself, but on a cast of the subject’s clothing. This phenomenon, which can be described as “metonymic”, whereby it is not the thing itself that is decisive but its surroundings, also applies to many of Erwin Wurm’s works.

Absence and presence are fundamental aspects of his art. Human figures often appear partially or completely covered in clothing. Has the garment developed a life of its own or does the clothing change the silhouette of a person so dramatically? The artist uses this ambiguity to consistently develop the sculptural reality. Volume and form are classic components of sculpture. Changing and varying them is central to this concept of art.

Wurm goes to great lengths in his depiction of the human being. Again and again, it is invisible aspects that suddenly become decisive in the visible. His psychos are creatures that are reminiscent of the organic, but at the same time have long since abandoned it. These figures transform into surreal beings, trapped in their garments or in their own disposition, often merging with objects or everyday items.

In principle, clothing and fashion determine our outward appearance; it is also an expression of a certain social obsession – to stand out, to be hip, etc. Erwin Wurm’s art clearly demonstrates that this can often fail spectacularly and that the absurd theatre then takes its course. Criticism and humor balance each other out.

emblemata sonantes. is a commissioned work for SHOWING STYRIA 2025

Klaus Lang’s idea for a new composition for a pavilion at SHOWING STYRIA 2025 relates directly to Schloss Eggenberg and the year in which construction began in 1625. emblemata sonantes. is around 50 minutes long and is a hypothetical walk through the magnificent days of Schloss Eggenberg in 1625 translated into sound – in 365 days, which correspond to 365 bars.

In the process, texts from the emblems that can still be seen in the palace’s historical ceiling painting program, sung by a soprano voice, appear again and again. Emblems, whose Eggenberger’s models come primarily from the Spanish diplomat Saavedra Fajardo’s book on the ideal Christian prince, are combinations of short sayings and images that together have a moralizing message. Properly understood, they guide the viewer towards the wise exercise of rule.

Another direct reference of the composition to the time of the construction of Schloss Eggenberg is the instruments used. Klaus Lang composed the work for the Graz-based ensemble ĀRT HOUSE 17, which works with historical instruments from Renaissance and Baroque music, such as viola d’amore, viola da gamba, recorders and harpsichord.

Klaus Lang, who is also a scholar of historical tuning systems and has published a standard work on the subject in Auf Wohlklangs Wellen durch der Töne Meer, has written the emblemata sonantes. for a mean-tone tuned instrument with 19 notes per octave.