Opening: Tue, 02.06.2026, 7pm

Duration: Wed, 03.06. – Sat, 27.07.2026

Artists: Alice Bucknell, Zuzanna Czebatul, Andrea Ferrero, Ndayé Kouagou, among others 

Curators: Frederike Sperling & Pia Wamsler

A defining feature of populist politics is its capacity to blur the line between reality and show. Whether something is fake or real, it’s the effect that matters – and above all, that effect must be spectacular. For author Abraham Josephine Riesmann, contemporary populism has more in common with wrestling than with traditional politics in this regard. In wrestling, according to Riesmann, all participants, both the performers and the audience, deliberately suspend their sense of reality in order to fully immerse themselves in the spectacle. Reality as a question of mindset – this is also the principle behind populist stagecraft. Real is what is accepted as real. Attitude is everything. Politics and show fights, fact and fake, manipulation and dissociation: the group exhibition Attitude Era, co-curated by Pia Wamsler and Frederike Sperling, navigates between these coordinates. Doubt, fragility, and humor become aesthetic strategies for thwarting the populist spectacle.

As part of the exhibition, Kunstraum is collaborating with donaufestival to release a podcast episode with artist and author Patricia Reed, based on her lecture Planetary Hope as Not-Yet-Realism, which she will give at the festival this year.

Pia Wamsler is an art historian, curator, and cultural worker whose practice focuses on sound, performance, and video art. After completing her studies in art history in Regensburg, she worked at institutions such as Kunsthalle Wien, with Johanna Bruckner, and on a range of exhibition projects. Since 2020, she is part of DAS WEISSE HAUS, where she serves as a curator and exhibition manager, and was also as a curator and project coordinator for the international platform Videocity until 2025. Since 2024, she has been a board member of SALOON Vienna and the SALOON Network.