5 SHOWS is the Artissima twice-monthly feature that recommends 5 exhibitions not to be missed in various geographical areas and cities around the world, chosen from the viewpoint of curators and directors of important institutions who live and work in these contexts. A different way to find guidance in the discovery of global contemporary art, from a personal and always up-to-date perspective.
The ninth focus is on Austria, with a selection by Sandro Droschl, Director of HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark in Graz.
Here are the 5 exhibitions currently on display that he has chosen for our readers:
Tony Cokes. SM BNGR2
Felix Gaudlitz, Vienna
Up to 30.05.2026
Tony Cokes’ solo exhibition SM BNGR2 centers around and observes club culture as hubs for celebration of life through love, desire, queerness, music, art, aesthetics and bodies moving.
SM BNGR2 de-marginalizes club culture by looking at its importance for subcultures, activist movements and political resistance through the lens of writers and academics such as Madison Moore, McKenzie Wark, and Simon Reynolds.
The exhibition presents the second iteration of Cokes’ SM BNGRZ series with a newly commissioned 3-channel-video as well as a triptych lightbox.
Lebt und arbeitet in Wien: Contemporary Art from Vienna
Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna
Up to 26.10.2026
Kunsthalle Wien presents the most extensive survey of the Viennese contemporary art scene organised by the institution in over a decade. For six months, across all of its spaces in the Museumsquartier and Karlsplatz, Lebt und arbeitet in Wien: Contemporary Art from Vienna will bring together over 130 artworks by 56 artists who live and work in Vienna, including painting, sculpture, installation, drawing, photography, performance, sound, film and video. Accompanied by a public programme of talks, performances and events, it places emphasis on the city as a dynamic space of production where art is shaped by a critical approach to the forces of conservatism and a sense of its own agency.
Stano Filko. 12 Chakras of Becoming
Museum der Moderne, Salzburg
Up to 7.02.2027
Stano Filko was one of the most visionary and most radical protagonists of the Central European neo-avantgarde. The Generali Foundation Collection—Permanent Loan to the Museum der Moderne Salzburg dedicates a comprehensive retrospective to the artist. The exhibition showcases works from all periods of his life and oeuvre—from early paintings and conceptual experiments to immersive environments and on to assemblages combining a wealth of materials and large-format sculptures.
Drake Carr. House
Grazer Kunstverein, Graz
Up to 31.05.2026
In the Netherlands, it is a longstanding tradition to appoint a stadsdichter: a poet immersed in the civic life of a city for a full year, tasked with writing about it as it happens. Not just the inaugurations and official speeches, but also the broken escalators, overheard gossip, gray Tuesdays, the hiccups, and sudden flashes of beauty. For our 40th anniversary, we will attempt something similar.
Enter Drake Carr, an artist whose work observes how social worlds, places, and moments can be captured, recorded, and translated into drawing. For his first institutional exhibition in Europe, titled House, he takes up residence at the Grazer Kunstverein, bringing his ongoing practice of portraiture into the institution’s orbit. For six consecutive weeks, Carr invites artists, team members, new acquaintances, and visitors—the changing cast of members through which the institution forms itself—to sit for him, in an effort to create a portrait of the institution.
Marlie Mul. Das Budget
Croy Nielsen, Vienna
Up to 16.05.2026
For the exhibition Das Budget, Marlie Mul has produced wall-mounted relief sculptures made using silicone sheets that are cut, folded, and rolled into forms. The wriggly, exoskeletal material is held in place by customized metal rods, and the monochromatic colors are the result of pigments mixed into the liquid polymers.
Mul’s interlocking pieces look relatively familiar, like alienated fingers or clay roof tiles, and the translucent colors in the patterns suggest fleshy skin tones. Constructed in varying scales, their soft edged repetition and optical patterns offer minimalist precision, and all of the tenets of geometric abstraction are there.
If you want to discover the institutions explored so far, here are the previous episodes:
Emirati Arabi Uniti | China | Norway | London | New York | Lisbon | Cape Town | The Netherlands