From March 21 to 23, the fourth edition of SPARK was held at the Marx Halle in Vienna. It involved 90 galleries, each of which presented the work of a single artist or an artist duo/collective.
The choice, which distinguishes it from the other fairs, to focus on “Solo Show” is carried forward to ensure equal exhibition space for all participating artists, embracing a democratic approach to contemporary art.
At the fair, there are also two Italian galleries, Fonti and Alessandro Casciaro. The Fonti gallery from Naples presents the work of Kiluanji Kia Henda, who also participated in Manifesta Barcelona – at the venue of Tres Xemeneies (Three Chimneys).
We have selected some stands for you.
The SPARK fair, great Austrian artists and new emerging ones
At the fair, the works of imposing artists such as Arnulf Rainer stand out, in the booth of Galerie Ruberl, or Lois Weinberger (Tirol 1947/Vienna 2020). Weinberger – represented by Galerie Krinzinger – looks at the garden as a work of art and gardening as a mode of reconciliation between man and nature, sharing some points of contact with the concept of the third paradise of the French agronomist Gilles Clément. Other artists, important for the history of contemporary Austrian art, yet little known internationally, are proposed by local galleries. The entire booth of Kai Middendorff is dedicated to Bruno Gironcoli (1936 Villach – 2010 Vienna), an artist whose family has Italian origins. He occupies a prominent position in the field of contemporary Austrian sculpture and was a master of artists now blue chip, such as Franz West and Ugo Rondinone.
Michael Kienzer in the stand of ROFA
In the stand of ROFA – Room Of Fine Arts, for example, the work of Michael Kienzer (1962 Steyr, Austria) is exhibited. The latter has been working as an artist in Vienna for over 40 years, focusing on the investigation of the physical and expressive properties of matter.
It evokes the series “Homage to the Square”, the metal works and the colored glass collages of Josef Albers and therefore also Optical Art, in his works of the series “One after another”, whose prices range from € 12,500 (152 x 116 x 14 cm) to € 8,800 (108 x 82 x 7 cm).
For the most complex and dadaist work presented in the stand, the sculptural assemblage “Melted into the surroundings”, the price reaches € 27,000, while the sculpture “Gerippe” – 2025, steel, aluminum, zinc, acrylic paint, 166 x 75 x 68 cm – which resembles a collapsed rib cage is offered at € 23,000.
Two Hungarian galleries in Vienna for SPARK
Courtesy Einspach & Czapolai Fine Art
The selected galleries originate from various European countries and beyond. As soon as we cross the entrance, we encounter two Hungarian galleries: Einspach & Czapolai Fine Art and acb.
The first gallery presents photographs and installations by Tamas Dezsö in the solo show “Tout se met à flotter”. The works of the Garden series invite you to move in a garden without fences, an abandoned space overrun by wild plants, in reference to the theories on the rhizome by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, expressed in the book Mille Plateaux (1980). Life expands without a hierarchical order and without a starting point. The diptychs that the artist proposes are a composition of two color negative photographs. The chromatic inversion, in blue and violet tones, communicates an unexpected, alien but not poisonous otherness, and an overwhelming sense of wonder, also given by the 1:1 dimensions. The carpet of leaves, needles, and flowers sucks us into an undergrowth full of life.
https://tamas-dezso.com/Garden-afterimage
From acb Gallery in Budapest, the activist Selma Selman
The artist and activist Selma Selman (1991, Bihać, Bosnia Herzegovina). She graduated in 2014 from the Painting Department of the Academy of Arts in Banja Luka, and has Romani origins.
The price range for works painted on machine parts or metal scraps (muffler, hood, door) ranges from 6,800 to 22,000 EUR (differing by medium and size), while the paintings on paper are between 2,600 and 4,000 EUR (VAT included).
Investigate the lifestyle of her family and the context from which she comes. Explore the themes of child marriage, the role of women in Romani communities, and education. Selman’s goal is to
break down the prejudices that push its community to the lowest common denominator, denying it the right to express itself.
Selma is the founder of the organization Get The Heck To School, whose goal is to encourage and empower Roma girls around the world who face poverty and social exclusion.
https://acbgaleria.hu/en/artist/selma_selman
The Romanian gallery IVAN with the artist Lia Perjovski
A solo show by the artist Lia Perjovschi (1961, Sibiu, Romania) is presented by the IVAN Gallery of Bucharest. The works presented span a time frame from 1988 to 2025. Lia studied Fine Arts at the State Academy of Bucharest from 1987 to 1993.
His artistic practice includes multimedia series, curatorial approaches, workshops, and conferences. His work has been exhibited in 700 exhibitions and events worldwide.
Ivan Gallery
Atelierele Malmaison, Calea Plevnei 137 C, B side, 1st. fl, Bucharest, 060011
Profesor Doctor Dimitrie Grecescu 13, Bucharest, 050598
www.ivangallery.com
The videos and documentation of Lia Perjovski’s performances
The video that records the performance of 1989 The Magic of the Gesture, Laces (Discrete Communications)(03:46 min, ex. 3/5 + 2AP) is for sale at the cost of €12,000.
Twelve students were involved: each was tied to 4 other colleagues with a single rope, connecting legs and arms. The movement of each individual participant was therefore correlated and interdependent with respect to the movement of the companions. The experiment required 45 minutes during which the artist carried out the tying operation. Subsequently, the volunteer performers had to wait a full 8 hours for the arrival of the cameraman; this resulted in different reactions depending on the temperament of each of the participants.
The ties began to become tighter and tighter as people became agitated. Some, on the contrary, once freed, did not regret the moment of connection.
The performance The Test of Sleep, 1988 is instead documented by 8 vintage prints (70 x 50 cm), for sale at €18,000.
The performance was documented by Lia’s husband, the famous Romanian artist Dan Perjovschi, in the intimacy of their apartment in Oradea, Romania. Lia applied indecipherable writings on her skin. The action was carried out considering the verb “lamentarsi”: the accusation was directed at the harsh living conditions during the Ceaușescu regime, the censorship, and the fear during the communist dictatorship.
The Alterego performance by Lia Perjovski against the dictatorship
16 vintage prints (56 x 73 cm), for sale at €24,000, document the performance Alterego (I’m Fighting for My Right to be Different), 1993. The performance aims to highlight the role of silence and its complicity in supporting and perpetuating violence.
Lia built a rag doll on which she performed actions such as painting it with black paint and throwing it against the audience present. These crude actions refer to the brutality of the military regime in the city of Timisoara, where dozens of civilians were killed during the anti-regime protests in mid-December 1989, from that moment the Revolution began.
ANNA LAUDEL and the duo of Turkish artists Ertuğrul Güngör and Faruk Ertekin at the SPARK fair
The Turkish gallery Anna Laudel is based in Istanbul. On the occasion of Spark, it focuses on the Solo Show of the duo Ertuğrul Güngör and Faruk Ertekin. Both grew up in Kütahya, which has a long tradition linked to ceramics. The artists use this medium to convey themes related to identity, heritage, and the mnemonic traces of a society that is on the verge of epochal transformations.
The peak of prices reaches 11,500 euros for the largest vases all around down to 3,500 euros for the smallest two-dimensional works, always enamel painting on ceramics.
The language of the duo hybridizes Turkish and Eastern iconographies, from One Thousand and One Nights, with some references to Western popular culture. Pop references from SKA to Punk, from anarchy to mythology, up to the millenary culture of tattooing. Thus, belly dancers and men in turbans, cupids in boxers and men armed with mohawks and gags are juxtaposed. The images are enclosed within the terms of amphorae placed on nightstands and stands of various styles and eras.
DOD Gallery and the solo show of Kottie Paloma
In the booth of the DOD Gallery of Cologne, the painting of Kottie Paloma looks at the first artistic expressions such as the cave paintings of prehistoric caves and archetypal symbols.
The works are proposed as fossils of contemporary life and are based on the shortcomings of modern society. The prices? For the smaller canvases, prices range from 7,500 (100 x 80 cm) to 4,900 euros (50 x 60 cm). German Angst, 2022 acrylic on canvas (203 x 179 cm), reaches 16,500 €. Discord and Dominance, 2022, acrylic on canvas (173 x 142 cm), is for sale at 13,500 €.
DOD gallery
Gallery for Contemporary Art
Lütticher Straße 44, Köln, Germany
https://www.instagram.com/definition_of_done
KUBIK – José Almeida Pereira
In the Portuguese stand Kubik, we see the pictorial work of José Almeida Pereira (1979, Guimarães, Portugal) who seeks to capture the dynamism and the concatenation of moments that chase each other in single images. The subject doubles, delighting in a clear and luminous palette. The artist then creates cylinders where the palette of each individual painting is restored, thanks to the brush cleaning touches. This reminds us of the Abruzzese artist Matteo Fato.
SUPPAN
The stand of the Viennese gallery led by the young Sebastian Suppan is dedicated to a single work by Linda Berger: a 10-meter-long drawing made with a goose quill and ink on a soft paper panel. The result is an immersive world of lines and layers of colors, a tangle of blue and red marks that chase and overlap each other, evoking the graphics of sound waves or the clouds drawn by flocks dancing in the sky. We are on the border between landscape and abstraction, the fluid stroke materializes on the paper in a process of repetition, linked to a meditative state. How much can such a work cost? Certainly, the aim is for a purchase by an institution.
www.suppan.art
SUPPAN I Habsburgergasse 5, 1010 Vienna
At Wilhelmina Gallery the work of the Greek Iasonas Kampanis
Iasonas Kampanis (1985, Athens), studied jewelry design and silversmithing at the Mokume Institute in Thessaloniki. Since 2007, he paints and works with digital media.
His work focuses on the animistic origins of Mediterranean culture, questioning the social superstructures that have caused humans to lose contact with the animal world and have severed pantheistic roots.
His works are acrylic on canvas and depict wild animals and woodland landscapes with thick and raw lines, there is no outline and filling, the pictorial stroke corresponds to the bones and flesh of the subjects.
www.wilhelmina.gallery
@wilhelmina_s_
The solo show of the duo zweintopf
Galerie Zimmermann Kratochwill presents the duo zweintopf founded by Eva Pichler (1981) and Gerhard Pichler (1980) in 2006 in Graz. The two Austrian artists create interventions directly in nature which they then photograph to document them. Their installations are made with organic materials like the one brought to the fair, a polyhedron in which each line contributes to creating an intricate, fragile but at the same time stable structure.
Galerie Zimmermann Kratochwill
Opernring 7, 8010 Graz, Austria
SPARK 2025, fourth edition
March 21-23
Marx Halle, Karl-Farkas-Gasse 19, 1030 Vienna
She has collaborated for many years with art magazines such as Artribune, XIBT Contemporary, ArtApp, Insideart and Espoarte, preferring contemporary art in its many facets and media drifts.
