The 2026 Program: CAPTCHA Realism
What does it mean to be considered human today? The Salzburg Art Association’s 2026 program CAPTCHA Realism examines the highly topical and controversial question of the conditions under which humanity is perceived, recognized, and verified in the digital age. The focus is on the politics of perception and the algorithmic, political, and aesthetic criteria through which identity is becoming increasingly legible—and thus also manageable.
Based on the CAPTCHA test (Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart), the everyday test procedure in which humans must prove their humanity to machines, the program reveals how much recognition today depends on technical systems.
CAPTCHA Realism is programmed and curated by Mirela Baciak, director-curator of the Art Association Salzburg (unless otherwise stated).
07. March – 29. November 2026
Kateryna Lysovenko | Ringgalerie
Lysovenko’s painterly intervention in the Ringgalerie of the Art Association Salzburg unfolds as a cycle in which the circular architecture of the Ringgalerie serves as the conceptual and formal framework for the work. At the beginning, cells float across the surface: blood cells, organelles, fragments of life before any identity. For Lysovenko, this cellular level precedes the question of citizenship, belonging, or recognition. Human beings emerge from the cellular field, but the emergence of human beings coincides with the emergence of desire. Gradually, she adds creatures that hover on the border of legibility. Are they human? Do they “deserve” to live? The question itself is the violence that refers to the central theme of this exhibition: dehumanization.
The commissioned work is supported by the ERSTE Foundation.
courtesy of the artist.
07. March – 10. May 2026
Linda Lach | Großer Saal
For some viewers, Linda Lach’s all keys, all times, may seem like a waiting room, a paradigmatic place of timeless waiting: a place one enters because of symptoms that cannot be diagnosed; a place where one remains stuck between dates and decisions. One is part of the system, undoubtedly—and yet not attuned to its pace. We find ourselves within a system whose mechanisms are familiar, almost intimate, yet difficult to name.
2025, human milk, latex, silicone, cotton, bandages, steel, needles, silk, 150 x 75 x
80 cm, courtesy of the artist.
Magdalena Berger | Studio
Certain Expectation by Magadalena Berger unfolds from a familiar yet quiet, barely perceptible form of violence: standing in front of a door that won’t open. Not because it’s broken, not because you’re late, but because you’re being denied access. The exhibition examines how thresholds arise, how access is regulated, and how the promise of participation is unevenly distributed—across bodies, interfaces, and social systems.
Berlin, courtesy of the artist.
23. May – 12. July 2026
Agnes Scherer | Großer Saal
In a large new installation, Agnes Scherer transforms two late 18th-century paintings by Francisco Goya into a walk-in theater set in which painting, scenography, and symbolic language merge into an expanded tableau of social rituals and manipulations.
dimensions, unique. Courtesy of the artist and Sans titre, Paris. Photo: Aurélien
Mole.
freakygreenfish | Studio
At the same time, freakygreenfish from Vienna will be presenting FrameTokCity: Bot on Bot Crime (2026) in the studio, an immersive urban simulation in which AI-generated TikTok bots clash with competing ideological narratives.
10. & 12. Juni 2026
Deva Schubert
In a new co-production by the Art association Salzburg and SZENE Salzburg, Deva Schubert’s performance allows two bodies and two voices to slide into semantic collapse.
25. July – 20. September 2026
Ryan Gander | Großer Saal
Ryan Gander’s large-scale installation One Hundred Things Twice, developed specifically for the Kunstverein, comprises 200 objects arranged in pairs and their associative stories. One Hundred Things Twice unfolds a spatial grammar of repetition, difference, and interpretive shift.
cm, courtesy of the artist and Lisson Gallery. Photo: George Darrell.
Hac Vinent | Studio
Hac Vinent presents a video installation that reflects on the construction of identity from the perspective of posthuman embodiment.
Ed. of 5 + 1PA, courtesy of the artist.
05. & 12. August 2026
The Distribution of Luck
Harun Morrison, Filipka Rutkowska, Urok Shirhan, Gernot Wieland
Curated by Mirela Baciak & Denis Maksimov.
Co-production with the International Summer Academy of Fine Arts Salzburg.
In August, the Art Association Salzburg, in collaboration with the International Summer Academy of Fine Arts Salzburg, presents the performance series The Distribution of Luck. Curated by Mirela Baciak and Denis Maksimov, it comprises four lecture performances by Harun Morrison, Filipka Rutkowska, Urok Shirhan, and Gernot Wieland, which deal with the themes of love, class, money, and identity.
03. October – 22. November 2026
HER. Annual Exhibition 2026 | Großer Saal
Curated by Attilia Fattori Franchini.
The annual members’ exhibition is curated by Vienna-based curator and author Attilia Fattori Franchini, who has developed a thematic group exhibition entitled HER.
Peter Schreiner | Studio
At the same time, we are showing an exhibition by Peter Schreiner, winner of the 2025 sponsorship award from the State of Salzburg and the Salzburg Art Association.
Washi-paper, 170 x 112 cm, courtesy of the artist.
12. December 2026 – 16. February 2027
Aline Bouvy
Our 2026 program concludes with a major solo exhibition by Aline Bouvy, created in collaboration with Casino Luxembourg. Following her presentation at the Luxembourg Pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale, Bouvy will occupy all of the Art Association’s exhibition spaces with an immersive project that examines abjection, physicality, and the precarious architectures of contemporary subjectivity from a feminist perspective.
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