This group exhibition, exposes issues of identity in a transatlantic context against the background of the digital revolution. Taking the desires, dreams, hopes, concerns, and anxieties of Austrian artists who live and work in New York City as point of departure, it comments on global civilization and its margins and explores what it means to be human in the digital era. Examining how it feels to be European in America, the show illustrates the tensions between a history-obsessed European context and the increasingly illusionary “free spirit” of America.

SWITCHING WORLDS covers a broad range of media and presents artists who although not necessarily associated with a critique of digital ubiquity bear witness to the fact that its influence has infiltrated almost every artist’s daily life. In the resulting wide and open spectrum of artistic practices, Erwin Redl, one of the preeminent light artists of the younger generation, marks one pole. Reflecting upon the condition of making art after the “digital experience,” Redl’s light installation Fade II creates a space of constantly shifting realities that is experienced as a second skin, our social skin. On the surface, Redl seems to be the most American of the artists exhibited, and yet there are hints of European complexity radiating from his work. If his art is devoid of humans, it gains its emotional impact from the contemplative interplay with the viewer.Kurt Hentschlager’s work, too, requires total immersion, but it does so in totally different ways. His audiovisual installation Karma challenges the beholder head on by playing with “dead” video game characters that have been reanimated post-mortem, giving them a disturbing feel of “real” human life and death. The artist not only raises issues of control but explores the grey areas of emotional access – our changing perception of what constitutes a fellow living being with whom we can feel empathy.

Featured artists include: Nin Brudermann, Ursula Endlicher, Rainer Ganahl, Kurt Hentschlager, Iris Klein, Heinz Lechner, Maria Petschnig, Hannes Priesch, Erwin Redl, and Stefan Sagmeister/Ralph Ammer