Gestural sculptures formed in ceramics are the focus of Erwin Wurm: Dissolution. Wurm's anthropomorphic ceramic sculptures, their forms oscillating between the ephemeral and the physical, are characterised by performative gestures. They affirm the inherent plasticity of the material clay, recalling the potency of bozzetti, in which artists from the Renaissance onwards were able to give direct expression to their innermost creative ideas. In Dissolution (2018-2020), Wurm sets out in search of a creative process that cannot be completely controlled. "Dissolution" has connotations of disintegration, decay, decomposition, and vanishing boundaries. The sculptures - with their protruding fingers, hands, lips, mouths, breasts, bellies, noses, and ears - force their way out of a clay mass. Text in English and German.

In his unique works Franz Josef Altenburg realised in clay the process of reduction and simplification that he had been pursuing systematically throughout his career. Combining the texture of the material with the order of his creations, the result is major series ranging from his Houses, Stairs, Pedestals, and Backdrops to his Blocks, Towers, Scaffolds, Containers, and Frames. With his expert mastery of handling and design techniques evident throughout the six decades of his oeuvre, Altenburg elevated ceramics into the realm of fine art. This book documents and analyses the artist, his work, and the site of his creativity in texts by art experts and a writer and offers for the very first time a comprehensive overview of his works, as well as an extensive illustrated biography with a list of exhibitions. Text in English and German.

Hello, Robot. Design Between Human and Machine investigates how robotics is becoming part of our everyday lives. The exhibitions shows that design in its traditional function as a mediator is indispensable if robots are to become a visible reality and not just remain hidden in washing machines, cars and cash machines. The volume clarifies where we already encounter these intelligent machines and where we may come across them in the near future: in industry, in the military and in everyday settings; at nurseries and retirement homes; in our bodies and in the cloud; when shopping and having sex; in video games and, of course, in film and literature. In a series of in-depth essays and interviews, experts such as the science fiction author Bruce Sterling and the design duo Dunne & Raby explore the question of how we deal with our environment becoming increasingly digital, smarter and more autonomous. They highlight our often ambivalent relationship to new technologies and discuss the opportunities and challenges that are posed to us as individuals and as a society in this context. In this regard, Hello, Robot. broadens the scope of the discussion to the ethical and political questions with which we are faced today in the light of technological advances in robotics, whilst confronting us with the contradictions that are often found in the answers to these questions.

Ever since the 1970s the Austrian couple Heidi and Karl Bollmann have been assembling a highly respected collection of international art jewellery. In this survey exciting artistic approaches as well as trends and developments of the genre are brought before our very eyes with the aid of selected works. The illustrations of the objects are complemented by a series of portraits, for it is only when worn by man that the pieces unfold their performative potential - and a subtle dialogue with the individual develops. Moreover, each piece is accompanied by a definition by the collector or the person who is being portrayed as to what jewellery is or could be, thereby stimulating thought about the meaning of art jewellery for the individual as well as for society as a whole. A particular focus lies in the work of the Austrian Fritz Maierhofer, one of the most significant jewellery artists in the world.

Kolo Moser was one of the most important universal artists in fin-de-siècle Vienna and is one of the leading representatives of Art Nouveau. His oeuvre includes painting, graphics, and crafts, as well as designs for fashion, lighting, and furniture, stage decoration, stained glass windows, book illustrations, and even banknotes. Blazing a trail for the art of his age, he was a founding member of the Vienna Secession and, together with the architect Josef Hoffmann and the industrialist Fritz Wärndorfer, he established the Wiener Werkstätte in 1903. The objective of this collective of fine artists was to realize the Gesamtkunstwerk or total work of art at the highest caliber of arts and crafts. Some 400 objects, presented systematically and explained with essays, open up a new perspective on his impressive oeuvre.

This book is the first comprehensive document to the complete works of Josef Hoffmann. As a student of Otto Wagner, a founding member of the Vienna Secession art movement (1897), a professor at the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts (Kunstgewerbeschule) (1899-1936), and co-founder of the Wiener Werkstatte cooperative (1903), the Deutscher Werkbund association (1907) and the OEsterreichischer Werkbund (1912), Hoffmann helped to cultivate a new model of architectural and product design characterized by advanced craftsmanship and artistic ambition. The book, which features more than 40 illustrated essays by well-known experts on Hoffmann's most significant buildings, interiors, exhibitions, and craft and product design, covers all facets of his extensive oeuvre. Richly illustrated, it includes a detailed biography and a comprehensive documentation section, making this a new standard reference work.

Influenced by the currently very popu-lar do-it-yourself movement, the contemporary design scene is increasingly shaped by a creative fusion of production and consumption. When it comes to the development of a self-made furniture culture, this book project combines for the first time design history research and consumerism theory with numerous historical and contemporary construction instructions and interior design recommendations. Across five chapters, design history and everyday culture are vividly and closely examined. What are their ori- gins? Which media and channels are used to pass on experiences and prac-tical instructions? Who exchanges in-formation with whom and under what circumstances? And what has changed since the advent of the era of digital modernity?

Otto Prutscher (1880-1949) was an architect and a designer in all applied arts media, as well as an exhibition designer, teacher and member of all the important arts and crafts movements, from the Secession to the Wiener Werkstatte and the Werkbund. The MAK - Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna - possesses a comprehensive graphic bequest and many significant objects from Prutscher's design oeuvre. Selected examples of Prutscher's creative work document his long-lasting influential role as a designer and artistic adviser for decorative art companies from Johann Loetz to Thonet. The publication conducts an audit of Prutscher's work as a pacemaker of Viennese modernism - over twenty years since the last show in Vienna and seventy years on from his death. Text in English and German.

The catalog for the 2015/16 exhibition at the MAK (Museum of Applied Arts) in Vienna is dedicated to Josef Frank (1885-1967), one of the most important Austrian architects of the 20th century. In addition to his groundbreaking architectural work, the catalog focuses his design, which remains highly influential to this day. As an architect and designer, Frank remains contemporary, having promoted a pragmatic approach to design that focused less on formal qualities and more on those of social experience. Frank's ideal of an unaffected and unpretentious practicality, aimed at an independent and sophisticated bourgeois culture of living beyond stylistic dogmas and fashionable conventions, seems more relevant than ever.

Das Buch dokumentiert erstmals umfassend das Gesamtwerk Josef Hoffmanns. Als Wagner-Schuler, Grundungsmitglied der Wiener Secession (1897), Professor an der Wiener Kunstgewerbeschule (1899-1936), Mitbegrunder der Wiener Werkstatte (1903), des Deutschen Werkbundes (1907) sowie des OEsterreichischen Werkbundes (1912) kultivierte er ein Modell moderner Lebensweisen auf der Basis einer handwerklich gepragten, kunstlerisch ambitionierten und gestalterisch avancierten Bau- und Produktkultur. UEber 40 illustrierte Essays namhafter ExpertInnen zu den wichtigsten Bauten, Interieurs, Ausstellungen, kunstgewerblichen Entwurfen und Produkten stellen alle Sparten seines grossen OEuvres dar. Grosszugige Bildstrecken, eine detaillierte Biografie und ein umfassender Dokumentationsteil runden das Buch zu einem neuen Standardwerk ab.

The catalogue for the exhibition at the MAK (Austrian Museum for Applied Art/Contemporary Art in Vienna) focuses on two fundamental approaches of the Moderne movement in an antithetic comparison, including the preceding history and after-effects to this day: Josef Hoffmann (1870-1956) and Adolf Loos (1870-1933) represent opposing reactions to the basic problems of modern civilization, which were triggered by the process of industrialization and democratization. Two different concepts for a modern way of life were created: Hoffmann promoted a comprehensive aestheticization of all spheres of life, while Loos interpreted architecture and design as the functional background for the development of individual personalities. In 16 essays, well-known European and American experts investigate a wide range of contributing conditions and the highlights and consequences of these two traditions of the Moderne movement, from the 19th century to the present. The key works of Hoffmann and Loos - as well as those of their predecessors such as Otto Wagner, and successors such as Josef Frank - are richly illustrated.

In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Eoos is one of the chariot draft horses of the sun god Helios; the design studio EOOS founded in Vienna 20 years ago is also a driving force, in the today's globalized world of design. This is verified by more than 130 design awards and an impressive number of patents. EOOS pursues a consistent reduced design language, alternating between archaic and high-tech and entirely free from stylistic affectations. This first and long overdue monograph on EOOS is divided into three parts, and is a source of inspiration, analysis, and documentation. Part one is based on a series of images, which gives insight into the "making of" - into the way in which EOOS approaches the design process. It shows references, links, drawings, research material, and finished products. In part two, EOOS assumes the form of first-person narrator to report on selected designs, backgrounds, and details of their histories. Part three documents in chronological order all the EOOS products that have gone into production, as well as projects and design experiments conceived purely by and for EOOS.