A project of Kunsthalle Wien in cooperation with the University
of Applied Arts Vienna and the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, supported by HS Art Service and Deko Trend GmbH.
Images that
reflect something of our surrounding reality tell and create stories in the minds of their viewers. However, what is based
on real documents or events? What mechanisms hide behind images and their production today?
This year’s Kunsthalle Wien Prize 2017 winners Marlene Maier (Academy of Fine Arts Vienna) and Olena Newkryta (University
of Applied Arts Vienna) are interested in the logics of cinematic image production. Framings that are used in picture production
– that usually remain unnoticed or invisible – are made perceptible in their multi-part installations. The conceptual relationship
between the works of the two graduates led to the joint exhibition title Everything a Hand Can’t Take. In her 3-channel video
installation Food only exists on pictures, Marlene Maier finds a visual “language” for the blurring and absence resulting
from the opaque merging of technological and techno-political processes. In her multimedia installation folding unfolding
refolding Olena Newkryta creates several possibilities for viewing the “real” in order to simultaneously create a “visual
language of the touch” that allows a connection between haptic and visual perception.
As
a venue “for the variety of artistic practices in contemporary art and the accompanying contemporary discourses,” and at the
same time as an urban institution, the Kunsthalle Wien pays particular attention to the city’s young and increasingly international
art scene. Even if Vienna is witnessing the establishment of more and more galleries and committed off-spaces, only about
5 percent of former art students may actually succeed later on in the art market. Awarded by the public sector and by established
institutions, scholarships and prizes help pave the way for younger artists as they enter the art system, a complex field
mutually determined by the economies of attention and money. The Kunsthalle Wien Prize
serves as a point of departure, made clear by how highly regarded the prize is by Vienna’s two
art universities and by the careers of many former prizewinners.
The prize dates back
to 2002, however in cooperation with both the University of Applied Arts Vienna and the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, a graduate
from each university has been awarded the prize since 2015. The Kunsthalle
Wien Prize includes the following: an exhibition of the winners’ works at the Kunsthalle
Wien Karlsplatz, a catalogue and EUR 3,000 in prize money for each artist.
Curator: Lucas Gehrmann
