Kill Canaletto!

Steinbrener/Dempf & Huber
Galerie Rauminhalt, Vienna
September 2 – October 4, 2025

We live in Potemkin villages that only benefit the tourism industry! How can it be that a nearly 300-year-old image has become the visual dogma for our present-day city?
Airbnb is partly responsible for skyrocketing rents across Europe. To counter the cultural and social devastation caused by mass tourism, Vienna should reclaim its tourist highlights for the population. St. Stephen’s Cathedral must become social housing!

For years, Vienna’s world cultural heritage has been protected by the so-called “Canaletto view” – the iconic view from the Upper Belvedere of Vienna’s city center, which refers to the famous 18th-century cityscape painting by Bernardo Bellotto (known as Canaletto). This image not only serves as a tourist model, but also as a conservation tool that regulates and slows down urban development. Steinbrener/Dempf & Huber use the “Canaletto view” as source material to attack this image topos with paper cutouts, dioramas, and photos.

The second part of the exhibition takes the discourse to another level: it shows a series of stuffed and manipulated animals that reflect on the relationship between civilization and nature using surreal methods. These sculptures have a scientific appearance, which is broken up by artistic interventions. The animal specimens will be on display in their original form as well as in reproduction. This is, in a sense, the central theme of the exhibition: the relationship between the original and the reproduction. This also brings us full circle to Canaletto, whose original city panorama of Vienna now turns the actual city into a reproduction of an old work.