This year’s presentation explores sculpture’s significance as a theme in present-day art and to the museum itself: De Sculptura provides an impression of output by established and younger Austrian and international artists from the ALBERTINA Museum’s collection of contemporary art.

About Alexandre Diop: He has to start out from reality to create a new reality, as Alexandre Diop describes his artistic practice. For him, art is a way to exist. That also means that the French-Senegalese artist, born in Paris in 1995, detects visibility with a material-aesthetic sensibility, cultivates the diversity of reality through assemblages and celebrates the hybridization of forms, content, and styles. Bricoleur-like, he connects everything with everything else, working with language(s), words, and scraps of text. When viewed, these often seemingly eclectic works reveal an archaic quality, recalling an analogue age and indigenous cultures. Diop creates a sense of belonging by combining what does not belong together. Found objects made of various materials such as nails, latex, and leather, as well as everyday items like books, metal cans, car parts, and photographs lend his work a rough quality. The gold leaf that Diop has lately applied to many works on paper lends something noble to his composed figures.