Lois Weinberger. Basics

Lois Weinberger (1947–2020) was an early and visionary critic of the dislocations of the Anthropocene and has been hailed as a pioneer of a different, artistic ecology. Beginning in the 1990s, he was a leading voice in the discourse around the relationship between nature and culture. Between ironic shamanism and a conceptual yet poetic austerity, his works illustrate the limitations of human agency and let us experience that our dominance over the natural environment is an illusion. Weinberger’s works interrogate our ethical standards, challenging them with the ostensibly marginal, unprofitable, and worthless and lending engaging sensual expression to an all-encompassing and ineluctable cycle of becoming and passing away.
Before his death in April 2020, Lois Weinberger conceived his exhibition Basics for the galleries and grounds of the Belvedere 21. Although it is not a retrospective, the show brings together over a hundred works spanning the decades from the 1970s to 2020. This catalogue contains contributions by Pierre Bal-Blanc, Philippe Van Cauteren, Catherine David, Severin Dünser, Hans Ulrich Obrist, and Stella Rollig.