Drawing an Orange Line


Installation, Group Exhibition
Facade of the Albertina Museum Vienna, AUT, 2015

Curated by Elsy Lahner

As part of the exhibition Drawing Now

Supported by
Lash & Lift GmbH

Commissioned work

Images by
Julia Gaisbacher


At the invitation of the Albertina Museum Vienna, Rainer Prohaska created a spacious installation on the museum’s facade.
Countless sketches testify to the essential importance that the sketch occupies in the artist’s work process. Sketches and drawings form the point of origin for nearly all his constructions, be they objects, spatial interventions or installations. Through them he sounds out and puts to the test these respective spaces for action. But sketches and drawings are more than a mere planning tool in Rainer Prohaska’s oeuvre. It is through this medium that the artist often advances the development of what has already been translated into a given space, before realization in later iterations of a series. Or to evolve in thought what cannot be realized materially.

And thus emerged for the exhibition of contemporary graphic arts Drawing Now a demonstration of what drawing is able to create in Rainer Prohaska’s cosmos. Starting from the surface of paper, the museum’s facade and structures as well as the urban landscape became his medium for spatialized drawing. In keeping with the logic of medial translation, instead of paints, the orange lashing straps that recur in Prohaska’s pieces assumed the role of the line in this spatial architectural drawing.

Works of the late Middle Ages and Early Renaissance take a role of major importance in the Albertina Museum Vienna’s collection. This golden age of creativity in Europe was accompanied by a strengthening of the artist; the signature, as the producer’s trademark readily apparent to the viewer, became common and paved the way for the development of an art market comprised of individual stars. In Drawing an Orange Line, signature and piece entered a symbiotic relationship, the lashing straps spelling out PROHASKA. Beyond the mere installation, the palace and the entire urban landscape bore, largely visible to all, Rainer Prohaska’s signature for the duration of the exhibition.