The Body Within Abstraction

With works by Heidi Bucher, Eva Fàbregas, Kimsooja, Dóra Maurer, Bruce Nauman, Steven Parrino, Chiharu Shiota and Franz West.

With this exhibition featuring prominent artists, Museum Haus Konstruktiv is celebrating its 40th anniversary. 

26.9.2026–10.1.2027
curated by Sabine Schaschl

In modern art’s constructivist-concrete movements, the human body was largely ignored as a subject, or as an element in the production of art. As Theo van Doesberg declared in 1930, the focus was on the autonomy of the line, colour and surface as artistic means. Figurative representations, on the other hand, were dismissed as illusionistic and speculative. This rational approach, devoted to intellect, mathematics and systematics, resolutely rejected the notion of also taking one’s own body into account.

The international group exhibition THE BODY WITHIN ABSTRACTION offers a pleasurable and critical examination of the entrenched perception that rational non-representational art is devoid of any references to the body. It presents examples in which the body becomes both a formal prerequisite and a thematic basis for minimalistically reduced and non-figurative works, by Heidi Bucher, Kimsooja, Dora Maurer, Bruce Nauman, Steven Parrino, Chiharu Shiota and others. The group show focuses on the degree to which the body is present in non-representational works – as a unit of measure, a model or a structuring entity.

For the first time since its relocation to the Löwenbräukunst site, all of Museum Haus Konstruktiv’s new exhibition spaces – both in the East and West wings – will be presented together in a single, unified display.