SHOEting Stars 5 Sinne & Mehr

This summer the Stadtgalerie in Klagenfurt houses a unique exhibition for people who want to use all their senses to experience shoes. Not only the five common ones, but also the sixth sense, a more mysterious one, looking in the past and in the future. About 100 fascinating design and art objects show shoe, by around 80 artists and designers from Austria and around the world, in all their sense stimulating manifestations. This exhibition is a cooperation between Stadtgalerie Klagenfurt, Ponte Organisation für kulturelles Management GmbH and the Virtual Shoe Museum.


The objects in this exhibition celebrate our possibilities to detect stimuli. We can hear shoes before we see them. We can touch them and then we are lost, because we want to feel them on our own feet. Some shoes we can eat (when we see or feel shoes made of mouth-watering material) and other shoes do something to our noses. In many ways shoes can stimulate our senses and that is exactly what the promoters of this exhibition want us to experience.

The exhibited shoes have sprung from the creative power of designers, artists and architects. Most of their experimental shoe creations are one of a kind or have been produced in small series only, made out of high-tech or natural materials as wood, ceramics, paper, leather or fabric. The spectrum ranges from an architectonic approach through experiments with materials to the shoe as a fetish object. The manifold possibilities inherent in shoes as a creative medium are reflected not only in the shoes themselves but also in installations, photographs and videos, and include the positions of various Austrian artists and designers.

Liza Snook, curator of the Virtual Shoe Museum and composer of this exhibition says: ‘Shoes symbolize passion and sensuality. They can move you in different ways. They can inspire and impress you. Shoes can be your second skin and bring you in or out of balance. In the hands of designers, artists and architects these fashionable everyday objects turn into spectacular and unique sculpture. Wearable or unwearable; as an art object, as a fetish. I think shoes acquire an autonomous artistic statement beyond everyday use.’

The following artists, architects and designers are present in the exhibition:
ainsley-t (Stuart Thom), Mihai Albu, Irene Andessner, Amber Ambrose Aurèle, Ona B., Be&D, Neel Barten, Madeleine Berkhemer, Marloes ten Bhömer, Lisa Brumbauer , Aki Choklat, Erik Cox, Nienke van Dee, Esther Dorhout Mees, Chris van den Elzen, Mariana Fantich & Dominic Young, Alexander und Christian Fielden, Joyce de Gruiter, Zaha Hadid for United Nude, Katrien Herdewyn, Iris van Herpen x United Nude, Ivo Hofsté, Carolin Holzhuber, Ivanka Ska, INSA (Joe Insa), Jan Jansen, Hélène Jaspers, Freya Jobbins, Lauren Johnstone, Sharon Joosten, Birgit Jürgenssen, Kei Kagami, Kaarina Kaikkonen, Gudrun Kampl, Hetty Kelderman, Aleksandra Kielpinska, Kenneth Kirschner, Dora Kloppenburg, Rem D Koolhaas for United Nude, Youngwon Kim, Jochen Kronier, Tokio Kumagaï, Kobi Levi, Pinelopi Loizidou, Eelko Moorer, Krista van der Niet, Thuy Pham, Minna Parikka, Caro Peirs, Bart Persoons, Antoine Peters, Tea Petrovic, Asia Pietryk, Peter Popps, Elvira Rajek, Maurice Regnaut, Inge Helena Rietjens, Roswitha van Rijn, Svenja Ritter, Mandy Roos, Iris Schieferstein, Rose Sellery, Deborah Sengl, Neta Soreq, Jared Steffensen, Sanne Steijger, Liesel Swart, Mark Schwartz, Gianluca Tamburini, Bruno Tansens, Kermit Tesoro, Elisabeth Thorsen, Sergio Toro, Enikő Tóth-Kern, Anna Vasof, Joyce Verhagen, Ap Verheggen, Ilja Visser, Rhonda Voo, Julius Welby, Lie van der Werff, Matthias Winkler, Anuk Yosebashvili, Erwina Ziomkowska, Barbara Zucchi, Peter Zwaan.

The exhibition opens on the 26th of June and ends at October the 11th.
On the opening day the 25th of June 19.00 the admission is free.

SHOEting Stars 5 Sinne & Mehr
26 06 11 until 11 10 2015
Mag. Beatrix Obernosterer
Stadtgalerie Klagenfurt am Wörthersee
Theatergasse 4
9020 Klagenfurt am Wörthersee
Österreich/Austria

Photo: Cone by Peter Popps, photo by Tom ten Seldam and Cutlery by Lauren Johnstone.