ArtistsNadezhda Busheneva |
In Search of an AlternativeLooking for alternative artistic solutions, the participating artists of the project address the problem of continuity in contemporary Russian art. The works of Nadezhda Busheneva, Alina Gutkina, Kirill Gluschenko and Arseny Zhilyaev vividly reflect the trends of the most recent years – the period of the stabilisation of political processes in post-Soviet Russia. |
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Joseph BacksteinBorn in Moscow in 1945, lives and works in Moscow |
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opening hoursTue-Fri 11am-6pm |
Galerie Grita InsamAn der Hülben 3 / Seilerstätte, 1010 Vienna |
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ArtistsMircea Cantor |
Communism never happenedNamed after the title of a picture by Ciprian Muresan, the exhibition presents a selection of works by internationally renowned Romanian artists from the contemporary scene from after the change of the country’s regime. The works relate to the provocatively revisionist trend of societies rewriting history in terms of partisan interests. Confronted with the Communist past of their country, the artists deal with the shadows of the dictatorship, with its avatars and clichés, its hazards and absurdities, its lifestyle, Kafkaesque atmosphere, and permanent lies. As if to get rid of the past forever, they challenge subsequent generations to participate in a journey across this forty-year wasteland via their works. |
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Ami BarakBorn in Romania in 1952, lives and works in Paris |
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opening hoursTue-Fri 12-6pm |
Charim Galerie WienDorotheergasse 12/1, 1010 Vienna |
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ArtistsPravdoliub Ivanov |
ENTREPOTFor centuries Viennese culture has been shaped by its function as a gateway to the Balkans. In keeping with this tradition Vienna has once again become a city of encounter and cultural exchanges – and this especially in the wake of the changes that the 1990s brought to Eastern Europe. An invitation was extended to ten artists, nine male and one female, from Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey who will now be coming together fort he first time. Three countries sharing a common coast on the western Black Sea. |
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René BlockBorn in Velbert on the Lower Rhine in 1942, lives and works in Bremen and Berlin |
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opening hoursTue-Fri 12-6pm |
Galerie KrinzingerSeilerstätte 16, 1010 Vienna |
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ArtistsStefania Batoeva |
An Elusive Object of ArtThe project presents itself as a typical show of artifacts in space. It focuses on the exhibits’ character as objects, which is treated with denial, irony, or mystification. The artists participating in the exhibition have rethought and reinvented this aspect by physically abusing or rearranging the objects. They find this characteristic of an artifact both repulsive and unavoidable. The project is grounded in the never-ending struggle of contemporary art with its own materiality. It highlights the irritation of artists from Eastern Europe, who are generally neglected by the market and turn toward the material aspects of art and its understanding as a commodity. |
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Iara BoubnovaBorn in Moscow, lives in Sofia |
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opening hoursTue-Fri 12-6pm |
Galerie Dana CharkasiFleischmarkt 11, 1010 Vienna |
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ArtistsArmen Eloyan |
EAST: EXCITABLE SPEECH: WESTKidnapping the East may be a necessary if post- Romantic desire, but also a desperate urge to rethink the politics of difference and division within the trans-European context. Emancipatory in itself, “excitable speech” refers to the liminal areas of the Caucasus and Eurasia, mapping a nobetween zone of phantasmagorias, fictive narratives, and dubious facts where history appears as a possibility, a filiation, an exercise. Here, the East-West encounter is articulated as a performative and relational act—a mistranslation of sorts—where language and rhetoric are considered subversive elements in the economies if not-politics of post-imperial conquest and heroic resistance. The satirical sufi figure of Molla Nasreddin acts as an inspiration and guide through the vocabularies of concrete, historical, but also fictitious and mystic libraries of the past and contemporary political realities. |
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Adam BudakBorn in Jaworzno, Poland in 1966; lives and works in Graz and Krakow |
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opening hoursTue-Fri 12-6pm |
Engholm Galerie WienSchleifmühlgasse 3, 1040 Vienna |
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ArtistsMetka Golec |
son:DA more items for the roomThe exhibition “more items for the room” sees son:DA resuming their computer mouse drawings of everyday objects from 2010, which are now presented in real space. The Mouse computer drawings of an object, which are considered to be more important than the real objects. The new objects redefine, redesign, and recontextualize the room. The installation oscillates between the real and the artificial, between what is and what was. It revives the items that formerly constituted and defined the space before the logic of the white cube prevailed. |
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Ivica BuljanBorn in Sinj /Croatia in 1965, lives and works in Croatia |
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opening hoursTue-Fri 11am-6pm |
Mario MauronerWeihburggasse 26, 1010 Vienna |
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ArtistsAnetta Mona Chişa & Lucia Tkáčová |
Material Culture / Things in our HandsArtists from Eastern Europe quite often seem to misunderstand the critical role art has come to play in the West. Instead of openly resisting or subverting the rules of capitalist society they apparently succumb to the seduction of luxurious commodities and shamelessly seek material success. |
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Dessislava DimovaBorn in Karnobat (Bulgaria) in 1976, lives and works in Brussels |
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opening hoursTue-Fri 12-6pm |
Christine König GalerieSchleifmühlgasse 1A, 1040 Vienna |
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ArtistsFlaka Haliti |
Fade Up / Flash BackSanja Iveković (Croatia), Flaka Haliti (Kosovo), and Hannes Zebedin (Austria) share a common interest in political issues that they link to questions concerning the relations between the public and the private. The exhibition’s title EAST BY SOUTHWEST has also provided the geopolitical starting point for the selection of their works, which deal with social aspects and partly with historical events that also include wars and their consequences. The exhibition takes both a critical view on socialist Yugoslavia and addresses traumatic moments during the country’s disintegration while also drawing a line back to the past of Austrian-Yugoslav history. |
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Silvia EiblmayrLives and works in Vienna |
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opening hoursTue-Fri 12-6pm |
Galerie Martin JandaEschenbachgasse 11, 1010 Vienna |
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ArtistsWojciech Bąkowski |
„Be careful because it might stamp itself on your mind.“The motto for the exhibition of the four Polish artists comes from a poem by Wojciech Bąkowski. The works presented oscillate between extreme human passions like fear and love. The juxtaposition of these emotions makes for a room charged with tension in which visitors receive sometimes deeply moving dramatic waves of associations and meanings. |
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Ewa GorządekBorn in Warsaw in 1957, lives and works in Warsaw |
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opening hoursTue-Fri 11am-6pm |
Galerie SteinekEschenbachgasse 4, 1010 Vienna |
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ArtistsVladimir Bulat |
ACTUALEurope one hour before, or after, the sunrise frontier, is that which tried real socialism, a failed political regime, and which still cannot find its definition. It was a frenzy against the past, that the regime wished to destroy, but were limited to distort it and then made from the past a cause for nationalism. Artists were highly involved in ideological propaganda, but, as they are supposed to be, imposed their independence, defended their individuality and realized what liberty could mean. Some of them emigrating got their liberty. (…) The East has very present in its imaginary frontiers – political, ethnic or religious, and frequently passing through them. The friends and the parents are oscillating between commuting and emigration meanwhile the artists, spread throughout the whole Europe, are feeling free as much as their art is of actual interest. |
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Ion GrigorescuBorn in Bucharest in 1945, lives and works in Bucharest |
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opening hoursTue-Fri 11am-6pm |
Galerie MezzaninGetreidemarkt 14, 1010 Vienna |
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ArtistsVlatka Horvat |
In The Future Everyone Will Be Anonymous For Fifteen MinutesGallery Nova was founded in 1975 in Zagreb. Though it was an official state institution, it had a radical exhibition program, showing avant-garde artists together with the emerging artists’ scene of the time. Since 2003 Gallery Nova has been run by the curatorial collective What, How for Whom [WHW], as a non-profit municipal gallery. Thirty years later, the WHW program is keeping alive contemporary and historical artistic practices that have been continuously ignored by the mainstream/dominant cultural institution. "Yet In The Future Everyone Will Be Anonymous For Fifteen Minutes" aims not to offer an insight into the integral exhibition program of 36 years of Gallery Nova activity, the gallery is treated as one of the exhibitor together with the artists who worked with the gallery in the past and/or in the future. Thus we wanted to point the institutional (socialist) framework that has allowed the production and presentation of radical artistic activities, and the nowadays lack of officiall valorization. |
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Ana JanevskiBorn in Belgrade in 1976, lives and works in Warsaw |
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opening hoursTue-Fri 11am-6pm |
Galerie Georg KarglSchleifmühlgasse 5, 1010 Vienna |
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ArtistsBartosz Mucha |
Close to Home“Close to Home,” the exhibition of emerging Polish contemporary art at Lukas Feichtner Gallery brings together two projects, one by Ania and Adam Witkowski (from Gdansk) and another by Bartosz Mucha (from Krakow), both of which explore living spaces as “imaginary terrains.” As young artists, all born in 1978, they work from their apartments. Their domestic spheres are imbued with desires as well as creative and psychological tensions, which are reflected in the objects and even the kind of objects they are able to produce there. Like artists of their generation from all over the world they dream of renting or owning a studio of their own and the creative freedom granted by this. The Witkowskis’ multimedia installation, which explores the space of their apartment in detail, is titled Housemates and follows an ironical tenor articulated in the title of the collage Almost Paradise. The centerpiece of Mucha’s installation is the publication 52 Lazy Weeks, a collection of drafts and plans of ideal or fantastic living spaces developed within the span of a year in which the artist “did not leave the house.” |
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Magda KardaszBorn in 1967 in Warsaw, lives and works in Warsaw |
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opening hoursTue-Fri 11am-6pm |
Lukas Feichtner GalerieSeilerstätte 19, 1010 Vienna |
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ArtistsJiří Kolář |
Constructions and storiesThe exhibition of works by the couple Běla and Jiří Kolář presents several extraordinary, yet hitherto hardly known pieces which exemplify the inspirational creative flair which helped the artists to establish themselves in the arena of Czech art and guaranteed that their works became an integral part of the international Conceptual Art scene after World War II. |
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Marie KlimešováBorn in Prague in 1952, lives and works in Prague |
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opening hoursTue-Fri 12-6pm |
Krobath WienEschenbachgasse 9, 1010 Vienna |
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ArtistsLiudvikas Buklys |
… forsakes its existence and gives its shape over to recollection.The contribution investigates the relationship between object, biography, narrative, and exhibition display through fragments of works by two Eastern European artists from different generations and countries, the young Lithuanian artist Liudvikas Buklys (*1984) and Slovakian documenta participant Stano Filko (*1937), which are complemented by a third, performative contribution by Canadian artist Michele di Menna (*1980).The storyboard: biography, anecdote, treasure hunt, classicism, Siberia, the repository, color, the gesamtkunstwerk, the house, the id, cognition, pause, champagne, precarious. The set: three slats, white, rockets, the bag, a statement, a catalog, an LP, an animation, two objects, a story, a performance, that which remains. |
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Dünser/KobaldBorn in Vienna in 1980 and 1969, live and work in Vienna |
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opening hoursTue-Fri 12-6pm |
Galerie Emanuel LayrAn der Hülben 2, 1010 Vienna |
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KünstlerJudith Braun |
What about this.Judith Braun comes from New York City to apply patterns of the universe on the walls of the gallery. Audrey Cottin has drawn folds and knots exploring the convolutions (and distortions) of the human brain. Mariana Castillo Deball watches Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent, spread its wings through time. Wings and knots cross each other on the wall. So far, Gintaras Didziapetris has released one issue of a magazine called Ninety. On the occasion of the exhibition, Ninety has commissioned Elena Narbutaite to make a series of pictures of an ancient ritual called smoking. Nicholas Matranga is writing a concept for the show and defines this as his artwork. Alain Della Negra and Kaori Kinoshita recently visited the World Forum of Spiritual Culture in Astana, Kazakhstan, where they shot a video about Noospheric economy and evolutionary algorithms. Benjamin Seror takes all this up and sings it – more or less as a Frenchman would do. |
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Raimundas MalašauskasBorn in Vilnius in 1973, lives and works in Paris |
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opening hoursTue-Fri 12-6pm |
Galerie Andreas HuberSchleifmühlgasse 6-8 |
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ArtistsDorota Jurczak |
Gabriele Senn Gallery presents works by Dorota Jurczak, Tomasz Kowalski, Philipp Schwalb, and the Strupek Group. The selection is aimed at both revealing and resolving the importance of regional specifics (like those of Polish popular culture in this case) by unfolding contrasts and correspondences. At first, peculiarities of style, which are oversimplistically read as a characteristic of Eastern European art, seem to become clearer when works are directly confronted with each other. Yet, it soon becomes obvious that even the most conspicuous indications of regional influence cannot be understood without considering international exchange. Distance from or closeness to the source of influence, individual adjustments of appropriation, old and the new interpretations . . . all these elements interact and disrupt a straightforward categorization between the established and the mobile, the modern and the traditional. |
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Roberto OhrtBorn in Santiago de Chile in 1954, lives and works in Hamburg |
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opening hoursTue-Fri 12-6pm |
Galerie SennSchleifmühlgasse 1A, 1010 Vienna |
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ArtistsPeeter Allik, Ana Bănică, Răzvan Boar, Harijs Brants, Alina Buga, Cătălin Burcea, Raul Cio, Nicolae Comănescu, Adomas Danusevičius, Teodor Graur, Ritums Ivanovs, Mihkel Kleis, Kaloyan Iliev - Kokimoto, Győrffy László, Oana Lohan, Peter Mintchev, Gili Mocanu, Sándor Pinczehelyi, Nedko Solakov, Roman Tolici, Ecaterina Vrana, Andrius Zakarauskas |
Portraits and Self-Portraits in Private CollectionsThe exhibition at Knoll Gallery is based on a survey of art collecting in Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, and Romania, showcasing approximately thirty artworks on loan from private art collections in these countries. It features a selection of portraits and self-portraits and focuses on works from Romanian private collections. |
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Liliana PopescuBorn in Bucharest in 1975, lives and works in Bucharest. |
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opening hoursTue-Fri 12-6pm |
Knoll Galerie WienGumpendorfer Straße 18, 1060 Vienna |
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ArtistŽilvinas Landzbergas |
The Future is NowŽilvinas Landzbergas is a dream weaver, who is known for placing the viewer in uncanny artificial surroundings that seem at once familiar and distant. As a visual artist with experience in stage design, Landzbergas is concerned with storytelling through sculpture and installation. Loosely based on sci-fi literature and films, the installation shown in the exhibition is a made-up story comprised of animation and sculpture that questions the future of today’s society. |
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Laura RutkutėBorn in Vilnius in 1974, lives and works in Dresden |
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Projektraum Viktor BucherPraterstrasse 13/1/2 |
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ArtistThea Djordjadze |
CasualtiesThea Djordjadze’s installations clearly reveal her fascination with functionalism and formalism. Her works examine the symbiosis of the supposed contradiction between conceptual and intuitive action. What about the nature of function and form regardless of their utility? |
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Nicolaus SchafhausenBorn in Düsseldorf in 1965, lives and works in Rotterdam |
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opening hoursTue-Fri 11am-6pm |
Galerie Meyer KainerEschenbachgasse 9, 1010 Vienna |
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ArtistDaniel Knorr |
Dead Letter OfficeAgainst all the stereotyped choices offered by the neat geopolitical rebranding of the Former East (formerly considered faraway and magical in its weird otherness, as well as irrational, poor, underdeveloped, and aspiring, like a younger brother who remains forever inferior) into a wildlife park of the Omnipresent West (technologically advanced, rich, superior, though currently in crisis) and the similarly motivated division between the North (cold, dark, rational, expensive, Protestant, old, perpetually thinking about a safe Zukunft) and the South (warm, sunny, emotional, cheap, Catholic, young, living in the oblivious condition of the eternal mañana), as well as possible combinations of the above-mentioned directions (East by Southwest is one such hybrid), the position we must occupy is that of a permanently and consciously marginal presence. The margin, in the South, East, North and West, offers a temporary hideout zone, an exclusive refuge, in which we do not need to declare where we want to belong – at least until we are told to leave. The fragile dignity of the stateless, the exiled, appeals to us more than any idea of inscribing our bodies and minds into existing political geographies or of representing a nation or region – however pleasant, amusing, civilized, and rich in traditions some nations and regions may be. While appreciating the pleasures of traveling and the joy of uninhibited global communication, we would rather enjoy a longer, improvised picnic on the side of the road. |
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Adam SzymczykBorn in Piotrków Trybunalski, Poland in 1970, lives and works in Basel |
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opening hoursTue-Fri 11am-6pm |
Galerie nächst St. StephanGrünangergasse 1/2, 1010 Vienna |
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ArtistsNil Yalter |
Fragments of MemoryNil Yalter is both on the inside and on the outside, defies geographical boundaries. She has the intellectual freedom to look from the West to the East and from the East to the West. Only a universal language of art can guarantee its independence of mechanisms of representation. Using art as a compass guiding us into the future, we destroy our dogmatic heritage. The “East by Southwest” event contributes to the universal dialogue in the field of contemporary art and opens up new horizons of creativity. |
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Derya YücelBorn in Istanbul in 1979, lives and works in Istanbul |
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coincides with: VIENNAFAIR
12.-15. Mai, 2011
Preview 11. Mai 2011
www.viennafair.at Fruits, Flowers and Clouds
12.-14. Mai 2011
www.fruitsflowersandclouds.at






































































































