Exhibition
SAINT PETERSBURG HANGING
Erekle Tsintsadze, founder of IKO ART, arrived in Austria as a refugee from Georgia 12 years ago and initially worked for several years in NGOs. Through his circle of artist friends, he entered the art trade, as he explains in conversation. Until now, he has primarily dealt with restitution cases. “Old art,” as he puts it, “is only a small part of what is going on in Vienna.” He now wants to introduce his collectors to the young Vienna scene as well and opened a generous basement gallery in Vienna’s eighth district this autumn.
For the current exhibition, he invited two young curators: Ema Kaiser Brandstaetter, art consultant and cultural manager with a focus on female empowerment, and David Hassbach, formerly of Galerie Lisa Kandlhofer. Inspired by the host’s Georgian background, they opted for a Saint Petersburg hanging, a practice that has become synonymous with the dense hanging style first established in the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg. “Salon hanging is about showing off. But we don’t want to show off what we can afford, but rather what is available in Vienna,” David Hassbach explains. But with a twist. After all, the title proclaims a “Saint Petersburg Re-Hanging.” An immoderate exaggeration to the point of exhaustion. Perhaps a self-experiment to define the limits of the art space.
IKO ART brought together 60 artists. From classical painting and photography to sculpture. As with any collection, there are strong and less strong contributions. According to David Hassbach, the curators’ main aim is to present them on equal footing, placing established and emerging artists side by side. They also want to bring subjective perception back to the forefront. Deliberately, no name tags were placed next to the works. Intuitve, subjective seeing is to be encouraged. But when you manage to find your focus, you discover Val Wecerka, Anita Schmid or Michaela Schwarz-Weismann – strong contributions by female artists that stand out. Ema Kaiser-Brandstaetter is responsible for ensuring that half of the works on display are by female artists. Attention was also paid to ensuring that all the artists had a connection to Vienna, as well as focusing on younger protagonists. But older positions also make their voices heard from time to time – above all Ona B.
Bringing many people together in one room, that is IKO ART, promoting network thinking, which this exhibition has succeeded in doing in both the figurative and literal sense. Where the program will go in the long term remains to be seen.