The World of Tomorrow Will Have Been Another Present

The World of Tomorrow Will Have Been Another Present stakes out moments in the mumok Collection of classical modernism that resonate to the present day—beyond mere chronology and style histories, beyond supposedly linear narratives. Who, if not the artists from a collection of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries like that of mumok, no matter when they may have been active, would understand more about such a form of nonlinear thinking? A thinking backward and forward at the same time, a thinking in interwoven and intricately enmeshed particles and strands. One that is aware of itself, of its art historiography, and is borne by doubt and criticism of conventional truth and knowledge regimes. Seen historically and from a contemporary perspective, the exhibition presents artistic practices as a blue-print for circular temporalities: as a budding potential, as an exercise in networked thinking, a sequence of events with an open beginning and end.

Curated by Franz Thalmairin in collaboration with Nikita Kadan, Barbara Kapusta, Frida Orupabo, Lisl Ponger, and Anita Witek. Exhibition design: Studio Kehrer