A resplendently baroque room at Upper Belvedere plays regular host to an art installation in the Carlone Contemporary exhibition series.
- New installation every six months or so
- Access included in an entrance ticket
- Often intriguing pieces
- Cleverly juxtaposed with the surrounds
- Current/next installation:
- Marina Faust (Mar 8 to Oct 15, 2023)
- Michail Michailov (Oct 19, 2023 to Apr 14, 2024)
- Book Upper Belvedere tickets* online
- See also:
- Upper Belvedere overview
- Art exhibitions in Vienna
Contemporary art, old Gods
(Exhibition view “CARLONE CONTEMPORARY: Rona Pondick”; press photo by Johannes Stoll / Belvedere, Wien)
When Prince Eugene put in a small room just off the back garden entrance to Upper Belvedere palace in the early 18th century, he resisted the temptation to leave the décor as a bit of plaster, a coat rack and a shoe stand (shame – imagine the shoes).
Instead, Eugene commissioned one Carlo Innocenzo Carlone (1686–1775) to decorate the ceiling with a fresco.
Carlone’s rendition of Apollo and Aurora combines with other frescoes and wall paintings to create something quite contrary to the whitewashed walls of modern art galleries.
Instead, you have a blaze of Greek mythology and colour in what is now known as the Carlone Hall.
The room itself remains entirely empty, but for an art installation in the form of a single work that changes every six months or so.
This Carlone Contemporary exhibition series features contemporary art specifically chosen to create a dialogue or intriguing juxtaposition with its historical baroque surrounds or the narrative on the ceiling. The old and the new. The mythological and the modern.
Current/next installation
- ambulant # 05 by Marina Faust (March 8th to October 15th, 2023): a sculpture built out of parts of a chandelier within a mobile metal frame. An object of elegant and wry contrast.
- Dust to Dust by Michail Michailov (October 19th, 2023 to April 14th, 2024): coloured pencil drawings use an illusionist approach, just as the surrounding frescoes do.
Recent artists & works
- Rona Pondick: a metal hybrid of sculpted monkeys and Pondick’s own form that invited a closer look, played with our perceptions, and reflected a conceptual and physical duality at different levels (ended January, 2023)
- Lena Henke: the Aldo Rossi’s Sleeping Elephant installation offered an ambiguous view. Are we observing an abstract yellow elephant or a set of horizontal arches? Perhaps both (ended August, 2022)
- Volkmar Klien: an installation that merged sound, colour, and movement in one through a remarkable pendulum clock and peacock feather installation (ended February, 2022)
- Irene and Christine Hohenbüchler: sculptural objects created by the twins (ended September, 2021)
- Renate Bertlmann: an adaptation of her Discordo Ergo Sum installation, featuring dozens of glass roses (ended January, 2021)
- Walter Pichler. Alte Figur: Pichler’s abstract metal female sculpture protruding from a mattress (ended February, 2020)
- Uli Aigner: a giant multi-coloured porcelain vase (ended November, 2019)
Tickets and tips
Access to the Carlone Hall is included in any entrance ticket for Upper Belvedere. The room itself marks the start of the tract hosting medieval masterpieces.
How to get to the art
Follow directions for Upper Belvedere. Once past the ticket check, go immediately right to enter the Carlone Hall and view the installation.
Address: Prinz Eugen-Straße 27, 1030 Vienna
(Article icon courtesy of the Met Museum.)