VIENNA Talks showcases a broad spectrum of presentations, discussions, and debates with important representatives of the contemporary art scene. This year’s Talks provides an exciting and multifaceted platform for art professionals from different Eastern focus regions – people who rarely have the chance to meet each other – to represent their countries to the fullest and evidence the unique character of the region. Each day of VIENNA Talks will reflect upon a topical theme in contemporary art.
Location: VIENNA Talks booth C23
The discussions will be in English.
12 October 2013
VIENNA Talks: Luxury of Art
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2:00 – 3:00 pm: Arts for Brands, Brands for Art
Moderator:

Daniel Kalt (Editor of Die Presse Schaufenster, Vienna)
Photo: Michaela Bruckberger
Speakers:

Plamen Dejanoff ( Artist, Emanuel Layr Gallery, Vienna) llves and works in Vienna. He had solo exhibitions at Mambo Bologna and FRAC Champagne – Ardenne, Hamburger Kunstverein, MAK and Mumok in Vienna, La Salle de bains, Lyon at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris and at Le Consortium in Dijon.

Vadim Grigorian, Marketing Director of Creativity and Luxury at Pernod Ricard and Global Project Leader for the activities of the Absolut Art Bureau.

Dr. Ellen-Andrea Seehusen (Founder of IAM – International Arts Management, Munich). After a successful career in marketing at companies such as Deutsche Lufthansa and BMW, Dr. Ellen Andrea Seehusen decided to specialize in the integration of art projects in international companies and founded IAM International Arts Management in 2007. In recent years IAM has developed the concept of the Hamburg Art Week and assumed the artistic direction.
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3:00 – 4:00 pm: Artists in Austria
Moderator:

Krist Gruijthuijsen in the Artistic director of Grazer Kunstverein, curator, critic and academic director of the Department of Fine Arts at the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam. His work focuses on the complexity of the artist’s social, political, and both of them independent person within the company.
Speakers:

Kerstin von Gabain (Artist, Galerie Gabriele Senn, Vienna) is working in a variety of media including video, installation, sculpture, and photography. Her work has been the subject of a recent solo exhibition at MAK, Vienna (2013) and Gabriele Senn Galerie, Vienna (2012).

Esther Stocker (Artist, Krobath Gallery, Vienna). In her installation art, Esther messes with her viewers’ heads, surrounding them with lines and planes that change their perception of space. Walking into one of Stocker’s black-and-white rooms is like invading the two-dimensional world of a line drawing.
- 4:30 – 5:00 pm: School of Happiness
Daily talks between artists and professionals from different fields, such as psychology and philosophy, on the theme of happiness.

Prof. Gerald Bast (Rector of the University of Applied Arts Vienna)

Dorit Chrysler, composer & thereminist, is the Founder of the NY Theremin Society and has provided the sound for Jesper Just’s work at the Danish Pavillion of this year’s Venice Biennale. She has performed at Lincoln Center, Berlin Biennale, Sibelius Academy Helsinki, Art Basel, Moderne Museet Stockholm and Roskilde Festival. Her latest record *Avalanche* is produced and released by Anders Trentemøller.

Michael Höpfner (Artist, Hubert Winter Gallery Vienna) currently lives and works in Berlin and Vienna. His work as an artist is based on the practice of walking in deserted landscapes in Asia, Europe and Northern Africa. Recent works had been shown at Flex-Sil Reloaded, Kunsthalle Sankt Gallen, curated by Giovanni Carmine and at “after five and a half days walking the trail peters out”, a solo show at Galerie Hubert Winter, Vienna.

Albert Heta was born in 1974 in Prishtina, Kosova. Heta’s works are often simple acts of intervention in an existing social condition, responses to a given situation, or rethinking of existing objects. His notable works ‘It’s time to go visiting: No visa required’, a public intervention on British Airways billboards in Prishtina (2003), ‘Embassy of the Republic of Kosova in Cetinje, SCG’ (2004), or his ‘Kosovar Pavilion Venice Biennial 2005’ (2005) distributed in collaboration with e-flux, are not merely the installations or acts of appropriation, but also acts of engagements with the conditions under which the works were accepted by the curators, media, politicians, and the public. One of his latest work ‘Revelation’ (2012), the restoration and activation of the street lighting in the Square of Brotherhood and Unity with the Monument of Revolution, aims to light up a view of the architecture of Kosovar society and the surplus created by the state building politics used to engineer a project for a new state in Kosova. Since 2006, his work is also channeled through a collaborative intervention, project institution Stacion – Center for Contemporary Art Prishtina.