Feature

In 2024, Kontakt is celebrating both 20 years of existence and the necessity of focusing on developments and tendencies in art from Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe from the 1960s onward. In this context, a number of events are set to take place across Europe that underline the importance of Kontakt and its attempt to do justice to the mission of representing modern and contemporary art in a particular region of Europe as well as in Europe at large.

As part of its research activities, Kontakt enabled Branislav Dimitrijević and Jelena Vesić to publish an English–language volume featuring their conversations with Ješa Denegri, one of the leading critics and theorists of Yugoslav modernist art. In the following, Branislav Jakovljević provides his review of this publication—which offers an international audience translations of some of Denegri’s seminal texts for the first time.

Petr Štembera is one of the key figures of Prague’s body art movement of the 1970s. In her essay, art historian Hana Buddeus looks at the relevance of Štembera’s work today and at how it is embedded within Kontakt’s 20th-anniversary activities.

In January 2024, the Slovak President Zuzana Čaputová awarded the highest state decoration to Július Koller (1939-2007) in memoriam for his outstanding contribution to the cultural development of the Slovak Republic in the field of fine arts. Undoubtedly, this award is deserved due to the countless domestic and international exhibitions, the extensive reflection on his work, and last but not least the popularity of his work, which ensures the artist’s permanent presence in global art history.

Since 2020, publicist and dramaturge Claus Philipp, filmmaker Julius Lermer, and artist Manuel Gorkiewicz have been meeting with Central and Eastern European artists and intellectuals for conversations aimed at contributing to a more comprehensive understanding of this cultural sphere’s realities and developments in both the artistic and societal realms.

On 7 September 2023, Jiří Valoch was announced as the winner of the Prix d’Honneur of the Bernard Heidsieck – Centre Pompidou 2023 International Prize for Literature for his lifetime achievement in multiple forms of living literature beyond the book. Jana Písaříková writes about Valoch’s relations with the French poet as part of a circle of neo-avant-garde artists.

Margherita Spiluttini belonged to one of Austria’s and Europe’s most important architectural photographers who understood the medium as a means to define a pre-formulated reality of landscapes with their inherent technical and civilizational parameters. Christine Frisinghelli, co-founder of Camera Austria, writes about her encounters and work with the artist, which started in the late 1970s and continued throughout the years until the artist’s passing in 2023.

Currently, Tate Modern in London presents the first retrospective exhibition of Slovak artist Maria Bartuszová (1936-1996) in Great Britain, where all of the artist's works collected by Kontakt are on display. Lina Džuverović wrote about the show which will travel to the Museum der Moderne in Salzburg in July 2023.

Peter Weibel was a polyartist, curator, writer, and media theorist and numbered among the most central international art world figures of recent decades. Günther Holler-Schuster, who worked together with Weibel very closely over a long period of time, reflects upon the significance of this artist’s work, of which Kontakt owns several early examples.

Anna Jermolaewa will be representing Austria at the 2024 Venice Biennale—a good opportunity to release the very first of our “Kontakt Video Portraits.”

Lina Paulitsch writes about the retrospective show of Sanja Iveković at the Kunsthalle Wien.

In November 2001, Roman Ondak parked a number of cars in the parking lot behind the Secession building in Vienna. This seminal work was realized for the exhibition “Ausgeträumt…” (Dreamed Out…). Twenty years later, Ondak reinstalled this work for the 20th anniversary of the contemporary art venue Kunsthalle Bratislava. Now the cars have returned to Vienna and became part of the Kontakt Collection. They are inscribed into the art in architecture project of ERSTE Campus and parked in the underground parking garage. In his essay, the Vienna-based historian, radio journalist, and exhibition curator Wolfgang Kos traces the history of this work’s semiotics.

The complete set of Artfan, a fanzine edited and published by Linda Bilda and Ariane Müller between 1991 and 1996 is now part of the Kontakt Collection. Christian Höller, who actively followed the publication in the 1990s, re-read the fanzine and examined its relevance within the context of art.

We mourn the death of our friend and colleague Jiří Ševčík who passed away on April 2, 2022.

Tobi Maier, director of the Galerias Municipais de Lisboa, reports on the activation of the exhibition and performance project “Collective Exhibition for a Single Body – The Private Score”, which this time took place in Lisbon, in a very specific post-colonial context.

Oleksiy Radynski, filmmaker and writer based in Kyiv, wrote a personal essay a few days after Russia’s act of aggression had started against Ukraine. While a war has unfolded in front of his eyes, the author provides an account about his coming of age and the responsibility he feels towards his country.

Chris Keulemans reviews the first comprehensive overview of Albanian artist Edi Hila’s oeuvre.

Orit Gat reflects upon Kontakt’s recent publication "White Space in White Space, 1973−1982. Stano Filko, Miloš Laky and Ján Zavarský," against the background of the Covid-19 pandemic in spring 2021.

Ana Dević, curator and member of the curatorial collective What, How and for Whom/WHW, remembers artist Ivan Kožarić.

In 1995 the first issue of the magazine springer*in was published. On the occasion of its 25th anniversary, Ada Karlbauer reflects on its history and intersections with the Kontakt Collection.

The Austrian sculptor and wordsmith Heinz Frank was an erratic yet essential figure from a generation of artists who debuted in the 1970s and whose uncompromising approach to art, philosophy, and disarming conversations has continued through the present day. On the occasion of Frank’s passing, architectural theoretician Otto Kapfinger writes about his encounters with the artist, who was also trained as an architect.

Anna Daučíková’s very personal essay and video portrait is a tribute to the Ukrainian artist Alina Lamakh. Together with her partner Valery Lamakh, she belonged to the Kiev circle of artists and intellectuals from the 1950s to the 1970s, which is subject of Daučíková’s video work “Along the Axis of Affinity” (2015).​

Lois Weinberger was among the most important Austrian artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. Kontakt is glad to hold a large number of his works in its collection as well as Weinberger’s contribution to the art in architecture project at the Erste Campus. Silvia Eiblmayr has written about the life and work of this outstanding artist.

VALIE EXPORT belongs to the first generation of conceptual artists and has worked with every possible form of media technology while using her own body as metaphor, screen, and medium of reflection. Silvia Eiblmayr and Walter Seidl pay tribute to this octogenarian Austrian artist, who is represented with a large body of work in the Kontakt Collection.

Adam Szymczyk writes about the work of Elisabeth Wild, an Austrian émigré who lived in Guatemala until the end of her life and whose oeuvre—parts of which belong to the Kontakt Collection—he discovered for documenta 14, which also featured the work of her daughter Vivian Suter.

The “Economy Ballet” marked the completion of Franz Erhard Walther’s “Thirteen Action Shapes” devised for the art in architecture-project at Erste Campus, and it also witnessed the release of a publication on the overall project. On this occasion, curator Pierre Bal-Blanc conceived a performance that was carried out by employees of Erste Group in combination with music by Matthieu Saladin and the presentation of a new work by Peter Kogler.

In 2019, Silvia Eiblmayr became the second person to win the Austrian State’s biennially conferred prize for art criticism, which is equal in status to the state prizes for artists but dedicated to those who reflect on artistic practices and help convey them to the public. Walter Seidl spoke with the laureate, who is a prolific writer and curator focused on the representation of feminist practices in contemporary art.

Manuel Pelmuş’s scripted performance for waiters and three dancers explores the economy of the rapidly expanding gastronomy industry and its effects upon behavior.