With his art, Rudolf Stingel has made a considerable contribution to breaking up the aura of the white cube. (Germ.)

For many years, he has been questioning the definition of the panel painting and, going beyond its limits, he reverses the relationship between spaces and painting. For example by laying carpets, as he did in 1993 at the Venice Biennial, in 1994 at Neue Galerie Graz, in 2004 in the hall of New York's Grand Central Terminal, and in 2010 at Mies van der Rohe's Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, whose modernist architectural idiom he wove into the carpet's grey industrial quality while retaining the Agra pattern. There is a sense both of a "domestication" (Reiner Zettl) of the exhibition space, and of a strong connection to its history and architecture. With his exhibition at the Secession, Stingel returns to the white cube and places three works in the auratic Hauptraum, a space he addresses playfully but with strict formalism.