May 6–9, 2021
Austria’s new international art fair in spring. Marlies Wirth and Tevž Logar will curate the special sections.
One theme, one position: the SPARK Art Fair Vienna will zoom in on individual artists, their work and their understanding of art. As Renger van den Heuvel, the managing director of the fair, emphasizes: “We want to focus, to create a framework for maximum concentration and in-depth discussion. In today’s globally networked world there are different approaches to topical issues and concerns.“ Both the “Interface” and the “Perspectives” sections will garner the interest of international galleries.
Interface
The curated “Interface” section, with its focus on digital and new media art, will address the new, exciting possibilities of digital technologies. This area will appeal to curators, galleries and collectors alike. The new media offer new possibilities. “This young, multidisciplinary and hybrid form of art experiments with different types of artistic expression, forms of representation and perceptual modes.” Marlies Wirth, curator for digital culture at the Vienna MAK – Museum of Applied Art, will invite 12 galleries to participate. Confronted with a world of technological advances, scientific discourses and social developments, this new media art is engaged in exploring the radical changes taking place in modern communication.
Perspectives
The curated “Perspectives” section symbolically relates to Kurosawa’s idea of the “Rashomon effect”—a term used to describe a situation in which an event is given different, often contradictory interpretations or descriptions by the individuals involved. 12 invited galleries will present artistic positions that seek to reflect on the conditions in which artists work, whether through critical questioning of identity, gender and economic relations, or referring to power politics and their authoritarian dimension. The common thread of the section—particularly in relation to the reinforcement of the new post-pandemic world order—can thus also be understood as symbolic resistance, while at the same time attesting sensitivity of time and space. “Art is indispensable when it comes to shaping and understanding life and our subjectivities. Seeing the world through the prism of art acts as an antidote to the insensitivity we as individuals face as a result of the growing violence in our everyday life. Art allows us to see the bigger picture and the way everything is interconnected, and to anticipate changes and their political, social and economic repercussions,” says Tevž Logar.
Marlies Wirth (1980) is an art historian and curator based in Vienna who works at the MAK – Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna. As the Curator for Digital Culture she has a key role in the programming of the VIENNA BIENNALE and heads the MAK Design Collection. She curates exhibitions in the fields of art, design, architecture, and technology. In 2019 she was the curator of the Official Austrian Contribution to the XXII Triennale di Milano. She was nominated curator of the Austrian contribution of the London Design Biennale 2021. Focusing on conceptual art and cultural anthropological contexts of artistic production, she also develops independent exhibition projects and authors texts and essays for publications.
Tevž Logar (1979) works as an independent curator, editor and writer. His recent curatorial project When in Doubt, Go to a Museum showcases works of art from five distinguished private collections of contemporary art. Logar has curated or co-curated a number of group and solo exhibitions, including the Slovenian Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennial, exhibitions and projects in New York, Montreal, Geneve, Beirut, Budapest, Łódź and Berlin. For the 58th Venice Biennial in 2019, he worked with the Pavilion of the Republic of North Macedonia as a curatorial consultant. From 2009 to 2014, he was the artistic director of the Škuc Gallery in Ljubljana. Logar is a co-founder of the Ulay Foundation (2014) in Amsterdam where he is presently a member of the Advisory Board. In 2014, he was nominated for the Gerrit Lansing Independent Vision Award (Independent Curators International) in New York. He lives in Rijeka, Croatia.
