Why Vienna Is Rising as One of Europe’s Hottest Gallery Scenes – RisePEI

When Emanuel Layr opened his gallery in Vienna in 2011, there have been few different industrial companies that specialised in displaying the younger artists he wished to help. “I didn’t actually assume an excessive amount of about it,” Layr stated, talking in his gallery’s light-filled workplace on an unseasonably sizzling summer time day. “I studied the historical past of artwork—I used to be not a lot based mostly in establishments. I used to be operating an alternate house. I believed: Why not promote artwork?”

Greater than a decade later, Layr’s gallery remains to be open, and it’s flourishing, with Vienna-based artists resembling Anne-Sophie Berger and Lena Henke on his roster alongside worldwide ones like Cécile B. Evans and Dominique Knowles. Others have adopted in Layr’s steps. A bunch of cutting-edge galleries have sprung up in Vienna prior to now 5 years, amongst them areas like Gianni Manhattan, Shore, and Felix Gaudlitz, all of which have figured in internationally revered festivals resembling Liste in Basel, Artissima in Turin, and FIAC in Paris.

Layr, nonetheless, is assured that there’s a stable collector base in Vienna and a powerful gallery ecosystem to fulfill it. “The cash is right here,” he stated. “The potential is there.”

When many individuals consider Vienna’s artwork scene, they consider its wealthy mass of museums—the Albertina, the Leopold Museum, the Kunsthistoriches Museum, mumok, and Secession, to call just some. They don’t consider town’s fast-growing gallery scene, which frequently barely registers on the radars of many worldwide artwork market observers.

Artwork Basel’s current Swiss honest, for instance, had simply 5 galleries with Vienna areas, one in all which was Layr’s. (Against this, greater than 70 of the 289 galleries collaborating had an area in New York.) In the meantime, the world’s 4 largest galleries—David Zwirner, Gagosian, Hauser & Wirth, and Tempo—have begun increasing their operations at beforehand unseen charges, opening in far-flung locales like Menorca and Gstaad, Switzerland, however thus far, none have arrange store within the Austrian capital.

Nonetheless, there are indicators that the Vienna scene is on the rise. König Galerie, a large of the Berlin scene, expanded to Vienna final 12 months. The Zurich-based Galerie Eva Presenhuber, which additionally has an area in New York, followed suit earlier this 12 months.

Eva Presenhuber, the Austria-born founding father of the latter gallery, stated in an e-mail, “Vienna is a cultural treasure with an necessary historical past, and I sit up for contributing to the neighborhood with exhibitions by distinctive up to date artists.”

That neighborhood is residence to some extra established galleries with lengthy histories within the metropolis. Valie-Export, one of the famend dwelling Austrian artists, had a few of her first solo reveals at Galerie Krinzinger and Galerie nächst St. Stephan, which had been based in 1971 and 1954, respectively. The latter gallery additionally started displaying Franz West, an Austrian sculptor who went on to win the Venice Biennale’s Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement award in 2011, early in his profession. Famed Austrian artists like Maria Lassnig and Bruno Gironcoli confirmed alongside him there in the course of the ’70s.

There are additionally mid-sized galleries like Meyer Kainer, which was based in 1999 and now represents a global slate that features Liam Gillick, Rachel Harrison, Ulrike Müller, Yoshitomo Nara, Raymond Pettibon, and West.

However these three galleries are the outliers in a metropolis whose gallery scene is today largely outlined by smaller, youthful areas that present rising artists. These newer enterprises are identified for displaying conceptual artwork of the type that many sellers sometimes worry as a result of it’s difficult and arduous to promote.

A glance across the metropolis’s galleries earlier this June, simply forward of Artwork Basel, when many within the European artwork world do their touring, testified to this. Layr was displaying a brand new physique of labor by Lili Reynaud-Dewar that featured photographs of the artist, painted in crimson and proven within the nude, together with questions directed on the viewer that deal with sexual orientation and personal property.

Felix Gaudlitz had a present by Tiffany Sia, who debuted a sequence of landscapes that aspired towards the “anti-sublime” and invoked the political historical past of Hong Kong. Vin Vin was displaying a two-person present by Alfredo Aceto and Thomas Liu Le Lann whose centerpiece featured the artists chewing white chocolate cubes in a 2012 Subaru Legacy whereas driving round Geneva.

Layr stated that one cause these galleries can mount these formidable displays is as a result of they don’t have to fret fairly as a lot about gross sales since hire is so low. “You possibly can hire an area for five,000–10,000 euros per 30 days,” he stated.

In the meantime, artwork festivals, which might usually be expensive gambles because of the costs for cubicles, additionally pose much less of a menace to Austrian galleries than ones based mostly in different nations. The Austrian authorities presents grant cash to galleries for the particular goal of displaying at two overseas artwork festivals per 12 months, defraying among the monetary blow.

A stable collector base additionally helps. Of all of the individuals listed on the ARTnews Prime 200 Collectors checklist in 2021, simply two had residences in Austria; one in all them, Heidi Göess-Horten, died earlier this 12 months instantly following the opening of her new personal museum in Vienna. However sellers stated there are numerous extra in Austria who’re rising thinking about shopping for artwork that don’t rise to that caliber but. Presenhuber stated, “With the opening of the gallery, I’ve been launched to a bunch of youthful collectors which are very engaged and I feel will positively affect the Viennese amassing scene sooner or later.”

Lately, some galleries have even begun relocating altogether in Vienna, a uncommon transfer that has raised eyebrows when it occurs, regardless of the enterprises’ measurement. In 2018, Berlin’s Exile departed the German capital for the Austrian one. The gallery’s founder, Christian Siekmeier, gave an interview to Artnet Information by which he stated that the hire in Berlin had “skyrocketed” and “political blindness and antagonism” had grow to be the norm amongst galleries.

The transfer owed one thing to Croy Nielsen, one other gallery which equally transplanted itself from Berlin to Vienna in 2016. Henrikke Nielsen, a cofounder of the gallery, stated in an e-mail, “We felt that there was room and perhaps even a necessity for a gallery like ours at that time. What was most stunning about shifting right here had been the optimistic reactions we acquired from the artwork world internationally.”

She praised the Vienna scene for its close-knit high quality, and pointed the annual Curated By gallery competition, by which worldwide curators are invited to arrange reveals at native industrial areas, for example of that.

“It’s rewarding to be a part of a neighborhood the place everyone know one another,” Nielsen stated. “The benefit of the scene being comparatively small.”