The show’s straightforward title promised honesty, but its precious subtitle, “Tu Sculptura Felix Nuba—Spatium” (You, happy sculpture, marry—space), a paraphrase of the famous Hapsburg dynastic motto, swiftly revealed curator Harald Szeemann’s exhibition strategy: the legitimization and ceremonious conquest of space through sculptures specifically chosen for the site. Szeemann’s three-generation show from Joseph Beuys to the 28-year-old Austrian Heimo Zobernig, was meant to be neither an exemplary survey nor a history of developments or ideas.

This enabled Szeemann to delete some of the standard

Individual expression is so tightly entwined with cultural and temporal factors in Franz Graf’s new work that it is difficult to tell them apart. Even the phenomenal reality of these works is difficult to ascertain: are they paintings, objects, or spatial installations? Multiple possibilities and references are implied in these hard, black, and materially rich artifacts hung blatantly on the wall. As “picture objects,” they enter into a visual dialectic with the room’s traditional stark-white neon lighting.

One picture per room is no longer novel for this gallery. For at least two years the