SIlvia Steinek Galerie

Fabian Erik Patzak At Home Between Two Worlds Fabian Erik Patzak’s painted exploration of his family’s traces between Europe and the U.S. Without diving into the complexities of why certain objects are charged with more meaning than others, and are thus more exciting than others when translated into visual art, the works in this series undoubtedly carry such weight. They are of everyday objects such as airplanes or credit cards – or at least they were in pre-pandemic times. That being the case, Patzak lends these objects a presence and esthetic charge sometimes found in portraiture, such as in the 1832 depiction of the publisher Bertin by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. The objects in Patzak’s works speak to us and tell us a story of flight and of not feeling at home anywhere and at the same time the ability to make anywhere feel like home. This experience is not just particular to the story of Fabian Erik Patzak’s family, but is also prototypical for the globalized world in which we live – albeit currently on a somewhat more virtual level. The tension inherent in the very detailed and literal paintings of the objects and their larger, overall metaphoric character is what makes up the particular appeal of these paintings. Ocean liners as icons of travel in the early twentieth century and airplanes as the same of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century have an air of historical reminiscence against the backdrop of our current reality. The fact that these paintings do not only relate a general story but also a concrete one, namely that of Patzak’s grandparents’ flight from the Nazis, lends them a multifaceted quality and depth characteristic of great art. Wolfgang Pichler

Fabian Erik Patzak is an Austrian-American artist who received his MFA from the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna (Muntean/Rosenblum). He is a recipient of the Theodor Körner Prize, the Naomi Anolic Early Career Award, and the Erste Bank ExtraVALUE Art Award. His work has been exhibited internationally and is housed in both public and private collections. Informed by a trans-generational experience of migration, in particular between Austria and the United States, Patzak’s work addresses inter-related themes such as heritage, displacement, and memory. Currently based in Vienna and Philadelphia, he has lived and worked in Santiago de Chile, Berlin, and New York City. Last two solo exhibitions 2020 DIRECT TRANSIT. das weisse haus, Vienna, AT 2019 DIRECT TRANSIT. Jewish Museum, Vienna, AT Last two group exhibitions 2020 Apeirogon, part I.  Silvia Steinek Galerie, Vienna, AT 2020 All Our Absent Dialogues. WARBLING, London, UK Awards & Residencies 2020 Erste Bank ExtraVALUE Art Award 2019-2020 studio das weisse haus – STUDIO ARTIST 2018 BKA Project Grant for DIRECT TRANSIT 2018 Naomi Anolic Early Career Jewish Visual Arts Award
 2017 Walter Koschatzky Award – honorable mention 2015 Theodor Körner Prize for Visual Arts
 2012 Kunstforum Montafon LICHT Competition 2009-2010 Project Studio Space Residency, PS122, New York, NY 2008 Featured Artist, Siemens_artLab Education 2001 – 2006 MFA: Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, Austria. Muntean/Rosenblum – Contextual Painting 2004 Universidad Catolica de Chile in Santiago, Chile

The Steinek Gallery was founded in 1982 by Heinrich and Silvia Steinek. 1990, the gallery opened an additional showroom, called „Halle Steinek“, located in the 9th district of the city and dedicated to personalizedl events and special presentations. The program of the 80´s was shaped by strong artistic personalities in painting and drawing like Franz Ringel, Walter Vopava, Adolf Frohner, Jean Dubuffet, whom Silvia Steinek met in Paris – as well as Georges Mathieu. The 90s are marked by the entry of artists of the younger generation and started with exhibitions by Julius Deutschbauer, Harald Durstmüller, Ilse Haider, Alfred Graf, Gudrun Kampl, Matthias Herrmann, much later Clemens Wolf and recently Fabian Erik Patzak. To establish a dialog between artworks by the young gallery´s artists and their international contemporaries, the gallery initiates exhibtions with, among others, Alighiero Boetti, Robert Barry and Tony Oursler. In 2006 the gallery moved from the intimate small white cube in the heart of Vienna to the galleries street Eschenbachgasse. The new rooms were opened with Robert Barry, pioneer of minimal art. Since 15 years, the gallery is also focusing particularly on the female positions in artistic practices within group exhibitions such as “feminine mystique” or “Vivace” ​​and solo exhibitions by Dorothy Iannone, Carol Rama, Katharina Kozyra, Gudrun Kampl, Renate Bertlmann, Jana Sterbak, Olga Georgieva and Anouk Lamm Anouk … The gallery program is mainly exploring the fields of identity, body, behavior patterns and desire and dealing with issus sociocultural issues. Since 1982, the gallery has been part of austrian and international artfair such as Art Basel (Basel), Arco (Madrid), Vienna Contemporary (Vienna), Fiac (Paris),Budapest Artfair (Budapes