“The war in Ukraine feels a lot closer to us right here than more west,” states Markus Huber, handling director of the Vienna Contemporary fair, held 11 to 14 September in the Austrian funding and currently in its 11 th year. As in the past, the reasonable concentrates on Eastern Europe, with galleries from Poland, Ukraine, Slovakia, Slovenia, Lithuania, Latvia, Hungary, Croatia and from Austria itself among the 97 exhibitors from 24 nations.
“I left Ukraine after the war started, three years earlier, and now live and operate in Vienna,” claims the artist Kateryna Lysovenko, that won the fair’s Münze Österreich Prize for her large-scale, brightly-hued metaphorical paintings. She is stood for by TBA gallery from Warsaw, established just one year back. It was among 10 galleries in a location called Zone 1, devoted to emerging artists who are either Austrian or that function there, curated by Aliaksei Barysionak. “Yes, this is an extremely troublesome time for the region,” he says. “Yet I intend to offer a voice and a room to musicians that are from this zone.” Indeed, all the galleries from Central and Eastern Europe revealed their discouragement at the crisis on the eastern boundaries of their region, however appeared established to continue to promote their artists. “If Ukraine drops, Russia won’t quit. We should not surrender, since otherwise Putin will simply continue on to Berlin!” claimed Lysovenko.
As for sales, assumptions were low. Prior to the begin of the reasonable, Markus Huber had actually alerted exhibitors that services in Austria were seeing significant downturns, which might well effect on them also. “The scene is really unsteady,” he confessed. By the 2nd day some galleries had actually offered no works at all, and those that had offered tended to be at extremely low price factors.
Ani Molnár Gallery of Budapest reported 4 sales on the initial day, including a geometric paint by Tamás Konok for EUR 14, 500 Sofija Milenoković of the Serbian Rima Gallery offered 4 works by Nina Ivanović, made from painted cord based upon landscape pictures, at costs between EUR 800 and EUR 2, 000; the largest work, priced at EUR 7, 000, had actually not discovered a buyer on the second day.
Vienna Contemporary also has a section for more historic jobs, Context, and unavoidably one booth was devoted to Hermann Nitsch, the leader of the Vienna Actionist college, whose guts-and-gore,” 6 -day play” had its last iteration this year. Four works, typically in sprinkled scarlet and grey, were valued in between EUR 65, 000 and EUR 250, 000: none had actually offered by the end of the 2nd day.
Amongst the non-eastern European exhibitors was Jerome O Drisceoil, proprietor of Dublin’s Eco-friendly on Red Gallery, revealing Alan Butler’s Procedural Landscapes for Android (Yosemite National Park v. 1 (2023, a generative digital work in an edition of three, was priced at EUR 9, 000 and Damien Flooding’s paint Timeless Yard (2024 “Many booths here are facing Eastern Europe, I’m here to obtain them to check out Ireland too,” says O Drisceoil cheerfully, regardless of having chalked up no sales. He adds that he had a lot more success at the exact same reasonable in the past.
“Vienna is a bridge in between western and eastern Europe,” Huber claims: “Central and Eastern Europe will certainly stay our main focus. When you think that 85 % of tourists come right here for culture, it is important that we ought to have a strong reasonable in the region,” he concludes.