From November 21 to 24, 2024 , we will be taking part in the art fair Paper Positions Vienna, which is taking place in Vienna for the first time.
The fair takes place at Kursalon Wien im Stadtpark, 1010 Vienna, Johannesgasse 23.
OPENING TIMES
Thursday, 21.11. 2024, 14:00 - 18:00 - Preview
Thursday, 21.11. 2024, 18:00 - 21:00 - Opening
Friday + Saturday, 22-23.11. 2024, 11:00 - 19:00
Sunday, 24.11. 2024, 11:00 - 18:00
We present works by
Birgit Graschopf I Kristina Kulakova I Lavinia Lanner I Desislava Unger
Visit us in the main hall, stand 4
Paper Positions Vienna Premiere
The first Paper Positions Vienna will take place in November at the Kursalon in Vienna's Stadtpark.
The special international fair presents contemporary and modern artistic works made of and on paper. The fair dispenses with booths and prefers to work openly and curatorially. This allows different artists or eras to be juxtaposed. The Viennese galleries Michaela Stock, Sturm & Schober and Rudolf Leeb will be taking part.
The latter will be bringing along Birgit Graschopf 's work "Federleicht".
November 21-24, 2024, paperpositions.com - Kursalon Vienna
Eva Komarek, Die Presse, culture magazine, 18.10.2024
Kristina Kulakova, Wonder (Rome, Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana), Architectured Emotions, 20 x 30 cm, Fine art print on Hahnemühle paper, framed + museum glass, Limited edition of 5 +1AP
Kristina Kulakova (* 1989) has been living and working in Vienna for 12 years and is a visual artist and freelance photographer. She got to know the art world as part of her management position at an art fair, from which she has since developed an individual artistic practice. In her work she combines autobiographical reflections with her interest in cultures of consciousness and poetry.
Solo exhibitions
2024 | "Gentle Spiral", Common Sense Gallery 2023 | "Trauma-Bondage" Vienna Collectors Club, Hochhaus Herrengasse 2023 | "Architected emotions", curated by Elisabeth Karoli, as part of Foto Wien 2022 | "Dancing Around Suffering", curated by Paula Marschaeck, DIT Schleifmühlgasse
Selected group exhibitions
2024 | Perspectives, Hoto Gallery Berlin 2024| The Window and the Couch, curated by Simon Rees 2024| 9 artist 9 days, curated by Vienna Collectors Club at Otto Wagner Areal 2023 | "Fluid Impulses", curated by Eo Studio 2022 | "Gentle Spiral", curated by Victoria Dejaco 2021 | "House of Loosing Controll", curated by Robert Punkenhofer, VIENNA ART WEEK 2016 | "Instagram Now!", curated by Severin Dünser and Stefan Lehner, BELVEDERE 21
Kristina Kulakova, Courage (Lisbon + Ipanema), Architectured Emotions, 20 x 30 cm, Fine art print on Hahnemühle paper, framed + museum glass, Limited edition of 5 +1AP
Woyty-Wimmer Prize 2024 awarded to Desislava Unger
Prof. Hubert Woyty-Wimmer (1901-1972) was an engraver, graphic artist and member of the Austrian Exlibris Society and the Künstlerhaus.
According to Sitfterwille, the Woyty-Wimmer Prize is awarded to "prize-worthy modern graphic artists at home and abroad at certain intervals". In the past, Künstlerhaus members have been honored with the prize at irregular intervals.
Desislava Unger, 3rd from the right, to the left of her Eva Petric, who is Hubert Sielecki Prize.
Desislava Unger, lives and works in Vienna and Lower Austria
www.desislavaunger.com
Education
2005-2010 University of Applied Arts, Vienna, Department of Fine and Media Arts (Graphics and Printmaking), diploma with distinction
2001-2005 National Academy of Fine Arts Sofia, BG (Painting), diploma with distinction
1994-1999 National Art High School for Applied Arts, Sofia, BG
Collections
Strabag Artcollection (A)
State Institute for Culture, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (BG)
Artothek des Bundes im 21er Haus, Vienna (A)
Albertina / Grafische Sammlung Wien (A)
Collection of the City of Vienna, MUSA (A)
University of Applied Arts, Vienna (A)
International Foundation "St. St. Kiril and Methodii" (BG)
National Art Gallery, Sofia (BG)
Foundation "Culture and Contemporaneity", Plovdiv BG
Solo exhibitions
2023 to all appearances, with Oliver Musovik, kunstraumarcade Mödling, NÖ (A)
2023 Crossing a hole, with Martin Trifonoff, U PARK Gallery, Plovdiv (BG)
2023 I would dive, Red Carpet Showroom Schottentor, Vienna (A)
2022 Es grunt so grün..., with Robert Svoboda, St. Gerold, Vbg (A)
2022 The impossible silence, Galerie STUBEL, Sofia (BG)
2022 in the middle / with Lena Andonova, Galerie Arosita, Sofia (BG)
2021 The bouncing man, U PARK Gallery, Plovdiv (BG)
2020 pole position silence, Galerie Rudolf Leeb Stadtgeschäft, Vienna (A)
2019 Jenseits der Wolken, Galerie Ortner 2, Vienna (A)
2019 Geschichten aus Wolken, U PARK Gallery, Plovdiv (BG)
Artist Statement
I work in the fields of drawing and graphics, mainly woodcut and screen printing. My aim is to create a simple image. I am only interested in the person, the experience, the suffering, the feeling. Landscapes and interiors are only the formal means to show the presence, absence or traces of people. I tell stories that I do not know.
About the artist
Desislava Unger's prints evoke the power of surrealist suggestion because, as in Georges Bataille's notion of information, they are not only formless, but rather formless as a kind of absence of specific sensations or meanings. These unsettling, emotional images depict scenes of a fragmented world lost somewhere between time and place. Unger uses prints as storytellers, weaving images of family struggles and societies caught in a dichotomy between city and country into a psychological conflict where the real and the imaginary are on equal footing. By working in series, visual information is used sparingly in Unger's stories, which intensifies the evocative mood.
Desislava Unger, Still Life II, drawing - pencil, ink pencil, 56 x 76 cm, 2024
A press portrait of the three artist sisters Lavinia, Valeria and Sara Lanner
Through the burning glass
The artist-sibling constellation has creative potential that keeps the art world going.
The encounters and conversations with a total of eleven artist sisters that "Kulturmagazin" visited in their studios for a short kinship study not only yielded exciting biographical insights and insights. As if through a magnifying glass, it also became clear how qualities and forces can be found in the sibling micro-constellations that reflect the dynamics of the art world.
Lavinia, Sara and Valeria Lanner are separated by a total age difference of 17 years. As a result, they spent very little time together as children, except during vacations and at weekends. Nevertheless, all three decided almost unanimously to pursue art as a career, albeit each in a different field: one for drawing, the other for performance, the third for music. Today, when they all three live and work in Vienna, they see themselves as a network that is characterized by points of contact and parallels, but also contrasts. "My sisters used to be my test audience," says Lavinia. "After our studies, we met as colleagues. Now it's a meeting of equals."
They not only support each other in practical matters, but also with feedback and criticism. "It's all about trust," says Sara. "It is therefore immensely important for me that the sisters see my work." Mutual give and take and exchange also play a major role, at meetings in one of the studios or at home, in the kitchen, at the lunch table. We talk a lot about the art we've seen, which also gives rise to shared visions. It's also exciting to see what the younger generation is currently working on."
Johanna Hofleitner in the press culture magazine, 18.10.2024
Lavinia Lanner, Portal X, 2024, 70 x 100 cm, 3B pencil on paper
Lavinia Lanner, born 1985 in Austria, lives and works in Vienna and Salzburg
member of: IG Bildende Kunst, Saloon Vienna, Künstler*innenhaus, Schmusechor
SOLO EXHIBITIONS (selection)
2024 SIMULTAN, Felberturmmuseum, Mittersill
2023 paper positions berlin/Art Fair/Galerie Rudolf Leeb, Berlin
2022 Hideout/OÖ Kunstverein, Linz
/ Assume Form/Showroom Volkstheater, Vienna
2021 Not Long Now/Galerie blaugelbe, Zwettl
/ Rote Wand/talk + presentation, Künstler:innenhaus Wien
/ PARALLEL VIENNA/Gallery Statement, Galerie Rudolf Leeb
2020 Open Studio/Galerie Schloss Wiespach, Salzburg
2019 Hairbarium/Galerie Rudolf Leeb, Vienna
2018 Red Carpet Showroom Volkstheater, Vienna
Lavinia Lanner studied in a painting class at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, but even then she concentrated on the medium of drawing. However, the artist, who was born in 1985, sees it not only as a restriction, but also as "maximum freedom" when she reduces her means to a minimum. She always uses a 3B pencil for her works on paper, but this allows her to create many shades between black and white. These are created by superimposing short strokes, which she places on the surface with movements from the wrist. She prefers to work on her mostly large-format drawing surfaces on the wall. Formats such as 170 x 150 cm are ideal for drawing comfortably and without considerable effort or external aids, as they correspond to the height and span of the artist's arms. Her working method in the studio follows a rigid and ritualized temporal structure - which is also necessary, as time and space become blurred when drawing. It takes weeks to complete works, but it is a meditative activity in which she creates a counterpart for herself in order to "fill her days" with an essential act.
The starting point for designs is often a bodily, physical movement by the artist, which focuses on something playful such as telephone scribbles - i.e. seemingly trivial and irrelevant things. The results are simultaneously concrete and abstract, but always also an expression of the artist's physical experiences. Folds are created that can be physical or reminiscent of plant worlds, without being definitively fixed. Lanner concentrates on the smallest possible things, which she enlarges, but does not specify or reference, nor translate, but presupposes in order to create new worlds of her own that have enough air to breathe. Her own parallel realities thus remain anchored in the world we can agree on.
At Paper Positions, Lavinia Lanner is showing works from the "Portals" series, among others, which are marked across the entire surface and sketch a twist towards an opening. In a more recent series, on the other hand, she depicts the process itself: it is about entering and leaving a surface, about entering and leaving a stage - in other words, about a flow, a movement. Just as the artist sees her oeuvre as a coherent whole that - if you like - revolves around something like drawing for the sake of drawing, she also conceives of her most recent works as excerpts from a world of processes that is only completed by the movements of the audience as they look at them.
Severin Dünser - Curator Vienna
Birgit Graschopf, Untitled / Versus Series Photography on watercolor paper, toned stainless steel frame 22 x 31 cm, 2023, unique + 1 Edition Artista
www.birgitgraschopf.com
*1978 in Vienna, lives and works as a freelance visual artist in Vienna
University of Applied Arts, Fine and Media Arts, photography class with Gabriele Rothemann, 2001-2007, diploma 2007
Hogskölan for Fotografi och Film, Gothenburg, Sweden 2003-2004
Exhibitions & Performances
2024 Federleicht, SPARK Art Fair with Galerie Rudolf Leeb, Marx Halle Vienna
2023 VERSUS, Vienna Contemporary with Galerie Rudolf Leeb, Kursalon Vienna
2023 Solo, RAG Art Club, Vienna
2022 A Multifacetada - Die Vielgesichtige, 3 permanent wall exposures in Brasília/Brazil, Espaço Cultural
Renato Russo, Bibliotheca Demonstrativa do Brasil, Austrian Embassy Brazil
Walls, Interrupted. Vol. 2, Museum SIAM, Bangkok/Thailand
2021 Flechtenkosmos, permanent wall exposure at Haus der Wildnis, Lunz am See/NÖ
Walls, Interrupted. Bildraum 01, Vienna
2020 Salon privé, Atelier Guido Kucsko am Hohen Markt, Vienna
2019 Exposed, Galerie Haas & Gschwandtner, Salzburg
2018 Performing Rooms. Day and Night. Ausstellungsbrücke St. Pölten
The Nocturne of Alicante, Bastei 10, Marco Simonis, Vienna
Performative wall exposure as part of the exhibition Raum und Fotografie,
Museum der Moderne Salzburg Austria
2017 Nocturnal, ARCC-Art Gallery Statement auf der Parallel, Vienna
Häuslichkeiten, KÖR-20 Seconds for Art for the INFOSCREENS of Wiener Linien
2016 Medusa, Bogliasco Center Gallery, Bogliasco / Italy and NYC / USA
In the works of theFederleicht series, Birgit Graschopf (*1978, lives and works in Vienna) focuses on ambiguities as well as supposed contradictions: In her mysterious and enigmatic pictorial worlds, she creates atmospherically dense narratives that are occupied by isolated, always female figures. Fragile and isolated, the figures can be read as involuntarily lonely or self-chosen alone - the interpretation lies (ultimately) in individual observation. The protagonists are located in specific spaces and architectures that appear to be temporarily or permanently abandoned, but are reoccupied and recharged by the figures placed in the picture. Autonomously acting shadows and schemes, duplications and fragments puzzle the figures, opening up spaces of association with surrealist photography and Romantic painting. Light plays a specific role here: Birgit Graschopf always photographs in existing light situations, whether in daylight or artificial light at night - in the spirit of Caspar David Friedrich, who wrote about the process of image creation: "Bring to light what you have seen in the dark."
This ambiguity on the level of content corresponds to that of the materiality of the image carriers: in a masterful combination of the spheres of analog and digital photography, Birgit Graschopf finally exposes her previously digitally processed images in the darkroom on concrete or sandpaper. Both materials are only hard and heavy at first glance. The concrete slabs cast by the artist herself show traces of the creation process - for example in their specific coloration and the enclosed air bubbles. The industrially produced sandpaper has individual characteristics depending on the grain size: On closer inspection, the rough surface reveals a glittering, velvety aesthetic that appears fragile and weightless. By positioning her photographic images on the wall, but also as sculptural settings - whether at eye level or close to the floor - in the room, Birgit Graschopf picks up on the inner pictorial and material tipping points in the form of presentation.
Veronika Rudorfer - Curator Berlin / Vienna
Birgit Graschopf, Untitled / Featherlight Series Photography on watercolor paper, silver-plated stainless steel frame 56 x 85 cm, 2024, unique piece
