Viennacontemporary and Curated by: the desire to experiment grows in Vienna
contemporary vienna we try again: the historic Viennese fair that last year suffered a setback from the brand new SPARK Art Fair, this year it reappeared with a new look and a new locationfinally finding his identity within the chessboard of Viennese and international artistic events.
Over the years Vienna has often reshuffled the cards at stake, presenting itself to the public with an incredible variety of spaces and artistic events, last doubt, thanks to state funding that without tolerance to this happy cultural flowering.
Separating from the historical Vienna art fairin 2015 contemporary vienna was born and immediately blossomedhelping to enhance a market which historically addresses, e draws, mainly to Eastern Europe.
From another secessionto use the Viennese lexicon, was then born in June 2020 SPARK art fairwhich, as the name implies, acted as a real spark which has finally attracted a more international audiencethanks to an innovative display, focused on single presentations, and a pool of exhibitors from Viennese galleries and interesting international locations.
Consequentially contemporary vienna he had to find a new place in the Viennese art scene, not just in a metaphorical sense. If last year it took place in the historic building of the Post Alte (the renovations still in progress had not benefited an already meager edition of galleries), this year, for the ninth edition took place in the spaces of the historic and sumptuous Kursalon Wienthe historic hall born in the mid-nineteenth century to host concerts and cultural evenings, where, for example, the first concert by Jonathan Strauss took place.
The central location, the small spaces, the neo-Renaissance style seem to correspond well to a fair that is increasingly defining itself as a small Viennese salon for a mainly Viennese and Austrian audiencevisits from Eastern Europe. Vienna’s historic bond with Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Poland and Ukraine is still very strong today and it is evident in the large number of galleries from the East, as well as this year by the – almost obligatory – focus on Ukraine.
Of the 62 participating galleries (last year there were 27), only 26 were Austrianthe others from Central and Eastern Europe. Ukrainian statementan intense program of talks and exhibitions in the city, allowed to enrich the programming with debates in which the Ukrainian Minister of Arts and Culture, Oleksandr Tkachenko, the Secretary General for Foreign Affairs at the Ministry of European and International Affairs took part , Peter Launsky-Tieffenthal, and the Deputy Minister of Culture and Information of Ukraine, Halyna Hryhorenko.
contemporary vienna: Layout and sales
The layout of the fair certainly surprised the public: tiny stands, which could rather be defined as desks (a single wall, with two small side wings) wind their way along narrow corridors which, on the one hand, allowed very spontaneous dialogues – almost obligatory, given the lack of space – from perhaps they prevented the galleries from exhibiting a greater number of works, and therefore forced the choice towards painting.
Few sculptures, only small in sizelike those of Julian Opie from Krobath or Thomas Feuerstein from Galerie Elisabeth & Klaus Thoman. In general, however, the galleries said they were satisfied with the public and with saleswhich took place mainly in the early hours of the preview on Thursday 8 September.
The historian Galerie Nächst St. Stephan Rosemarie Schwarzwälder from Vienna is to place a new painting by Herbert Brandl (72,000 euros) in a Viennese private collection; Krobat sold a Julian Opie sculpture to a Swiss collector for € 20,000.
KOW Berlinwith a larger and well-set up stand, it sold its young artists well: a painting by Sophie Gogl (1992) for 11,500 euros, one by Heinrich Dunst for 9,000 euros and two works by the rising star Simon Lehner (1996) for a total of 13,000 euros. People projectsalso based in Berlin, has sold ten works of a series by Milja Laurila to a well-known American collector for a total of 44,000 euros, and the Ukrainian gallery The naked room from Kyiv he placed four paintings by Pavlo Makov – not surprisingly also present at the 59th Venice Biennale – for a total of 120,000 euros.
The gallery stand is very interesting Karpuchina from Prague, with a presentation of sculptures despite and well-orchestrated wall works: the sculptures by Sabina Knetlová were sold for a total of 23,600 euros, and two works, made on thermal (and therefore ephemeral) by Serhij Dakiv for a total of 5,500 euros.
Among the greats of the fair there was B.C of Budapest sold 15 works by Selma Selman (* 1991 Ružica, Bosnia-Herzegovina) for about 40,000 euros and also raised about 3,000 euros for the artists foundation for the education of Roma girls. The latter was present in the section Zone1dedicated to artists under 40 and curated this year by Tjaša Pogacar.
Here we found Anne Schmidt from VIN VIN GalleryAgnieszka Polska from Georg Kargl Fine Arts, very interesting artists but who perhaps, like the others, deserved a space more worthy of their work. Let’s hope Zone1 is no longer in the Kusrsalon basement next year (next to the toilets and kitchens). The gallery Zeller Van Almsick presented a beautiful dialogue between the works of Minda Andrén and Kay Walkoviak, and the Lundgren Gallery from Palma de Mallorca said she was satisfied with the sales of the artist Igor Moriz (1996), a promising Polish artist.
Edited bythe real lifeblood of Vienna
L’cultural event that really brings new life and an international audience to Vienna however, for the past 14 years, Edited by: festival appreciated and still – strangely – not emulated by other cities, in which the participating galleries invite international curators (at the expense of the government) to curate solo or group exhibitions in which they have carte blanche both in the selection of artists and in curating.
Accommodates from a single theme that acts as a point of reflection rather than a curatorial directive, the galleries then, for a month, a selection of artists from outside the stable. The strong point of this festival is, according to 24 participating galleries who for years have appreciated its programming and results, the fact of to be able to meet new artists and to expand the network thanks to the invited international curators.
There is no shortage of sales, so they are all satisfied. The format allows you to create solid ties over time, both with individual professionals but also with the institutions from which they often come, and to leave the comfort zone, this year more than ever, being the KELET theme, ie the Hungarian word which means EST: an invitation to explore the many facets that with this word are created or dissolved in verbal and European language.
KELET it was an almost obligatory theme, the organizers explain: it originated from the trauma and geopolitical upheaval of the war in Ukraine, which at the moment obscures all other discourses and cultural trends. These events are particularly heartfelt a Viennathan historically it is the European capital most linked to the Eastern countries.
Dieter Roelstraete (writer, philosopher and curator based in Berlin and Antwerp) suggested calling this thematic picture “Kelet”, the title of an influential Hungarian avant-garde magazine published in Budapest in the early 20th century.
The invited curators were able to decline this theme in many original ways, adapting the curatorship to the identity of the host gallery. At the gallery Wonnerth-Dejaco for example the theme has been interpreted from a queer perspective, and the curatorial Kilobase Bucharest has collected a chorus of artists with different artistic practices (Apparatus 22, Anatoly Belov, Ștefan Botez, Irina Bujor, Robert Gabris, Alex Horghidan, Barbora Kleinhamplová, Sebastian Moldovan, Ioana Nemeș, Elisa Sighicelli) to tell the queer world, with entirely didactic and formally captivating works that know how to give voice to the urgencies, but also to the recent history, of the queer world of Eastern Europe.
There gallery Martin Janda instead he invited the artist Asier Mendizabal to curate an exhibition entitled Reroute — Reorient: a reflection on the concept of line as a trajectory, vector and element of connection and boundary. Projection, connection, demarcation between two different entities: these are the concepts that emerge from the reasoned and formally elegant orchestration of the works of Goshka Macuga, Mangelos, Ciprian Muresan, Roman Ondak and Tania Pérez Córdova.
Finally, to close with a flourish, we point out the exhibition at the gallery Hubert Winter, who invited our Alessandro Rabottini. The curator has built a very delicate conversation between the works of Giorgio Andreotta Calò, Latifa Echakhch, Phillip Lai, Basir Mahmood and Claudia Pagès Rabal, in an exhibition entitled “Water is washed away”.
The project knows how to distil, with sometimes light actions – like the line on the Echakhch wall, or violent, like the Calò cores, the meaning and significance of erosion. We can encounter, sometimes not immediately visible, works in which the notion and image of infiltration and erosion are manifested as a political or existential metaphor. The exhibition undermines the solidity of those fixed hierarchies of power, infiltrating, precisely, the idea that they are instead ephemeral and also subject to corrosion.
Vienna is becoming more and more international, varied and stimulating, if we consider that during the weekend Parallel was also held, an independent fair made up of stands, exhibitions and performative actions involving above all emerging artists, if not even students. One more reason to browse a city whose strength lies precisely in the balance between Austro-Hungarian rigidity and international experimentation.