Salzburg's Museum of Modern Art

We had some friends staying with us last weekend, and one of our ports of call on the Saturday was to explore the main collection of Salzburg's Museum of Modern Art. We'd not ventured there before, although we have been up the Mönchsberg lift that forms part of the complex a couple of times already.

The museum seems not to have any permanent collection on display, but houses an ever-shifting series of exhibitions. The two I particularly liked on this visit were "Gazing at the sun" by Jakob Mattner and the Solar Researchers of the Einstein Tower, and "Nothing Is Lighter Than Light" by Markus Raetz.

I liked the Markus Raetz work because although his subjects were pretty much standard pop-art fayre (Elvis and Marily Monroe), his continual reinterpretation of the same images in different mediums were a great sweep through artistic media of the Twentieth Century, whether the finished image was a monochrome image that had actually been rendered with complex colour print, or a simple but recognisable abstraction made from corrugated cardboard.

One of the principle sources used in this display was the centrefold of Playboy from September 1966. It was intriguing to think that the end product of a throwaway photoshoot by an anonymous model sometime around the time England were winnning the World Cup now formed the central image of a whole series of variations across a floor of a gallery in Salzburg.

I thought  "Gazing at the sun" was more original, being the fruit of a collaboration between the artist and scientists who specialise in the science of the sun and in studying our local star. Part of the exhibit included historical astronomical sketches, and other parts were more like installations. Carefully shielded narrow-beam spotlights shone onto arrays of mirrors, which cast onto the walls what looked like images of the solar system and beyond. In turn these were seen in and distorted by dark wall-mounted reflective pieces of work. The rooms for the exhibition were in semi-darkness, and had an ethereal quality about them.

Well, until one of our friends tried to climb inside a giant black hole painted on the wall, and we thought they'd set the security alarms off as a member of staff simultaneously emerged from a hidden door, but that's another story.

We are not that keen on the building itself - it is about the only modern looking building within the centre of Salzburg, and it looks horribly incongruous perched on top of the Mönchsberg next to the Festung Hohensalzburg. You can't deny that it has some some great views from the bar there though, and like that old adage, sitting within it looking out is the only place where you can't see it disfiguring the cityscape. There must have been one hell of a planning permission row to get it built in a town so steeped in their Mozart era heritage. The bar was really nice - except perhaps for trying a little too hard with the modern shock tactics. Did the actual bar itself really need a neon sign above it proclaiming "Drugs"?