This week we are heading to Vienna to participate in one of Europe’s most important art fairs. viennacontemporary kicks off on September. Thanks to its rich and diverse programme and great collaborations, viennacontemporary 2022 aims to be one of the most exciting editions yet! It is all the more special as it will be the first time the fair will be held in the neo-renaissance palace Kursalon Vienna, right in the heart of the city.
The Contemporary Lynx team will be there, as usual, to report live from the event. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram, where we will share with you a daily dose of the fantastic experience. If you are attending the fair don’t forget to visit our press stand in the magazine zone! In the meantime, we have selected some of the most interesting events and exhibitions for you to attend during your stay in Vienna.
1. viennacontemporary
Kursalon Vienna
Johannesgasse 33, 1010 Vienna
Page: www.viennacontemporary.at
Vienna’s leading art fair, Viennacontemporary, takes place from 8 to 11 September. Boris Ondreika, artistic director of viennacontemporary, and the viennacontemporary selection committee handpicked around 70 national and international exhibitors, announcing a programme of top-level, established exhibitors alongside exciting new discoveries. In addition, there will be a content focus and multi-part commentary: STATEMENT UKRAINE, in which viennacontemporary reacts to this year’s events in Ukraine and Europe.
viennacontemporary presents a rich programme with the following curated sections:
- ZONE1, curated by Tjaša Pogačar,
- STATEMENT UKRAINE
- New Collectors Program – Powered by Artsy
2. Curated by
Page: www.curatedby.at
Curated by is a gallery festival with international curators in Vienna that takes place from 9 September until 8 October. This year’s KELET theme stresses the traumatic geopolitical events that are currently influencing all conversations about art and culture, which is the war in Ukraine. This is particularly felt in a city like Vienna, which has historically been the easternmost of the major capitals for a long time. The initiator, Dieter Roelstraete proposed calling this overarching thematic frame “Kelet”, which means “East” in Hungarian — the opposite of ‘Nyugat’, the title of an influential avant-garde magazine published in Budapest in the early years of the 20th century.
Participating Curators & Galleries:
- Charim Galerie Wien / curated by Nicholas Tammens
- Crone Wien / curated by Eva Kraus & Volo Bevza
- Croy Nielsen / curated by Natalia Sielewicz
- E X I L E / curated by Zasha Colah & Valentina Viviani
- FELIX GAUDLITZ / curated by Tolia Astakhishvili
- GIANNI MANHATTAN / curated by Adomas Narkevičius
- Galerie Martin Janda / curated byAsier Mendizabal
- Galerie Kandlhofer / curated by KJ Freeman
- Georg Kargl Fine Arts / curated by Hana Ostan Ožbolt
- Christine König Galerie / curated by Róna Kopeczky
- Krinzinger Schottenfeld / curated by Rita Kálmán & Lívia Páldi
- Krobath Wien / curated by Klaus Speidel
- Layr / curated by Elisa R. Linn & Lennart Wolff
- MEYER*KAINER / curated by Karel Císař
- Galerie nächst St. Stephan Rosemarie Schwarzwälder / curated by Jarosław Suchan
- GABRIELE SENN GALERIE / curated by Maximilian Geymüller
- Shore / curated by Pierre-Alexandre Mateos & Charles Teyssou
- silvia steinek galerie / curated by Vít Havránek
- SOPHIE TAPPEINER / curated by Lukas Hofmann
- Galerie Elisabeth & Klaus Thoman / curated by Artist Project Group: Bernhard Garnicnig, Lukas Heistinger, Andrea Steves
- VIN VIN Gallery / curated by Kami Gahiga
- Galerie Hubert Winter / curated by Alessandro Rabottini
- WONNERTH DEJACO / curated by KILOBASE BUCHAREST
- Zeller van Almsick / curated by Frédéric Bonnet
3. PARALLEL VIENNA
Semmelweisklinik, Hockegasse 37,
1180 Vienna
Page: www.parallelvienna.com
From 6 September to 11 September, PARALLEL VIENNA takes place in Vienna for the tenth time, maintaining its previously established approach of using temporarily abandoned buildings as a platform for presenting contemporary art.
The event is a hybrid between an art fair, an exhibition platform and an artist’s studio. It combines exhibitions by commercial galleries, off-spaces, and art associations as well as individual presentations by selected artists. Instead of typical stands, each exhibitor occupies a separate room in the building where the exhibition is presented. These site-specific works and interventions are the hallmark of PARALLEL VIENNA and make the fair a unique and alternative exhibition format beyond the ‘white cube’.
The full list of exhibitors and artists taking part in this year’s PARALLEL VIENNA is available on the event’s website.
4. Belvedere 21
Arsenalstraße 1
1030 Vienna
Page: www.belvedere.at
Belvedere 21 presents an exhibition by the British artist Rebecca Warren. Rebecca Warren’s solo exhibition, The Now Voyager at Belvedere 21, is on view from 15 July and will run until 16 October. Adapted from Walt Whitman’s poem The Untold Want, the exhibition’s title emphasises the nuance of voyaging into the unconscious, into a living, direct mental and artistic presence. The exhibition consists of nine new large-scale, hand-painted bronze sculptures and a series of new neon collages presented on walls designed by the artist.
If you prefer to stay outside, then visit their sculpture garden. The Belvedere 21 sculpture garden showcases works by internationally renowned artists. The sculpture garden is accessible free of charge during museum opening hours via the new access from the Schweizergarten.
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Rebecca Warren, The Now Voyager, installation view, © Rebecca Warren, courtesy Maureen Paley, Galerie Max Hetzler, and Matthew Marks Gallery, photo: Johannes Stoll / Belvedere, Vienna -
Belvedere 21, exterior view, © photo: Lukas Schaller / Belvedere, Vienna -
Rebecca Warren, The inscrutable passage of an alien or godly intelligence, 2019 (detail), mixed media on plywood, 30 x 43 x 8 cm, © Rebecca Warren, courtesy Maureen Paley, Galerie Max Hetzler, and Matthew Marks Gallery, photo: Angus Mill -
Rebecca Warren, We R the Batique, 2019, mixed Media, 154 x 70 x 8 cm, © Rebecca Warren, courtesy Maureen Paley, Galerie Max Hetzler, and Matthew Marks Gallery, photo: Johannes Stoll / Belvedere, Vienna
viennacontemporary art fair is not only Vienna’s leading fair. Their geographic location as well as a focus on Central and Eastern European art and countries in the present times of war and human drama caused by Russia, requires remodelling of how we see Central Europe and art and culture in Ukraine today.
5. mumok – Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien
Museumsplatz 1,
1070 Wien, Austria
Page: www.mumok.at
mumok – Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien presents two exhibitions concurrent to viennacontemporary. The first of these, the Collaborations exhibition, explores the diverse strategies of collective authorship and builds a bridge stretching from the smallest to the largest unit of community: from the internal bonds of the collective to the particular constellation of the conjunctive, from the artist duo to the public, and finally from romance to the interconnectedness of life.
The second is Jesse Stecklow‘s first European museum exhibition, entitled Terminal. He is a Los Angeles-based artist who works with a precisely defined repertoire of objects that oscillate between image, text and sound. His sculptures enter into dialogue with their surrounding environment, effectively confusing the boundaries of the work. At mumok, Stecklow will transform the exhibition space into a waiting room, where he will present different versions of his sculptures in repetition on monitors that he has designed as a hybrid of a luggage carousel and a dining table. References can be found in these forms to the changes between public and private space during the pandemic.
6. Albertina modern
Karlsplatz 5,
1010 Vienna
Page: www.albertina.at
The exhibition The Face presents selected works of contemporary portrait photography from the collection of the ALBERTINA Museum. Photographs by both international and Austrian artists show how multifaceted portraiture can be. The photographs presented in the exhibition explore themes such as cultural identity, personal relationships, and diverse spheres of experience, as well as questions about the origins of individuals and themselves. The exhibition includes works by Nancy Lee Katz, Richard Avedon, Gottfried Helnwein, Chuck Close and Franz Hubmann. The exhibition is on view until November 6.
7. Albertina Museum
Albertinapl. 1,
1010 Vienna
Page: www.albertina.at
A retrospective exhibition of Jean-Michel Basquiat will be on show at the ALBERTINA Museum from 9 September 2022 to 8 January 2023.
One of the most important artists of the 1980s and the pulsating New York art scene. His work is more relevant now than ever and remains as pioneering and visionary as ever. His work draws attention to both his African heritage and problematic hierarchies in society, with pervasive racism being a theme he considered most important and personally relevant.
The exhibition presents around 50 major works from renowned public and private collections, providing new insights into Basquiat’s unique visual language and deciphering the essence of his artistic ideas.
8. Kunsthalle Wien Museumsquartier
Museumsplatz 1,
1070 Vienna
Page: www.kunsthallewien.at
Until 23 October, the Kunsthalle Wien Museumsquartier is displaying the exhibition BURN & GLOOM! GLOW & MOON! Thousand Years of Troubled Genders. This exhibition by Viennese artist and filmmaker Katrina Daschner, prepared in collaboration with curator Övül Ö. Durmuşoğlu, includes works from the 1990s to the present.
Daschner works with a variety of closely related media, ranging from sculpture, textiles, music, performance, social work and, above all, film. The artist’s work questions patriarchal mores and their everyday norms in Western society. Daschner plays with the boundaries between what is human and non-human and what is socially defined as the norm, exposing the artificiality of the gender binary – the dualism of men* and women – and the prejudices it generates by liberating the body.
9. Wiener Secession
Friedrichstraße 12,
1010 Vienna
Page: www.secession.at
Secession presents Lieselott Beschorner‘s exhibition, entitled Im Atem der Zeit [In the Breath of Time]. This is a direct reference to the environment context in which her works are created. Beschorner has been making art for more than seven decades and has been a member of the Vienna Secession for just as long. It is only in the present tense of the past decades that her ideas have been able to take shape. Despite its temporal nature, her art has something universal about it that elevates it above its present and ensures its relevance for the future.
Complementing the exhibition is the film Sekundenarbeiten (2021) by Christiana Perschon. This unusual portrait shows the artist making so-called ‘impulse drawings’, for which she needs about as much time as it takes to rewind a filmmaker’s 16-mm Bolex. While the artist’s paintings in her studio are kept in silent black and white, Lieselott Beschorner’s recorded voice is accompanied by a black screen.
10. MAK – Museum of Applied Arts
Stubenring 5,
1010 Vienna
Page: www.mak.at
MAK is a museum that especially focuses on architecture and contemporary art. It currently displays several exhibitions worth seeing. An exhibition of the MAK in cooperation with Kunst im Traklhaus, Salzburg displays the ELIGIUS AWARD 2022 – Jewelry art in Austria until 25 September. What’s more, MAK Geymüllerschlössel will become a discursive space dedicated to the phenomenon of fashion as a (CON)TEMPORARY FASHION SHOWCASE until 4 December.
However, one of the most interesting exhibitions on display at the moment is The Missing Link. Strategies of a Viennese architectural group (1970-1980), which is on display until 2 October. Founded in 1970 by Angela Hareiter, Otto Kapfinger and Adolf Krischanitz, the architectural group Missing Link was one of the most important phenomena to emerge from the Austrian avant-garde art and architecture scene of the 1970s. The complete oeuvre of Missing Link is now available in its entirety for the first time: from the early works of the protagonists – mainly utopian projects related to the so-called Austrian phenomenon – through various artistic actions in the 1970s, media analyses and research projects, to the so-called Wiener Studien [Vienna Studies] and participation in the Austrian New Wave exhibition in New York.
Vienna is full of highlights for art and architecture lovers. Sometimes you only have to walk through the city streets to come across art installations in the heart of the capital. At Am Hof Square, for example, you will see Olafur Eliasson’s light installation, Yellow Fog. For an hour each day, the building gets a magical haze: fog that spreads out over the sidewalk and the square.
If you are in Vienna for the first time, don’t forget to visit the Natural History Museum Vienna or see the masterpieces by Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt, Vienna 1900 and Art Nouveau in the Leopold Museum.
