WONNERTH DEJACO

In semi-automatic processes, the artist Axel Koschier takes a step back as author. He splits his role into the facilitator on the one hand and the ­executing worker on the other. In the interweaving of the various ­processual logics and logistics traditionally assigned to different artistic dispositifs, the coordinates shift. In this way, he opens up space for the materials and tools to react spontaneously with each other. Between “what you see is what you see” and hermetic technical and aesthetic inside jokes, Koschier regularly makes a game of provocatively challenging the expectations that participants in the art world have of the components used in artistic production. For Spark Art Fair’s section The Fourth Wall, curated by Fiona Liewehr, Koschier is developing a site-specific installation that takes cues from the fair’s architecture. Integrating the sterile standardization of the art fair’s presentation modes with his own subjective artistic decisions, this stage-like intervention in the conventional art fair booth will set in motion an process of entanglement of different parameters at play in the conception, distribution and interpretation inherent in any work of art.

Axel Koschier (1980 in Vienna) lives and works in Vienna. Graduated from the Technical University of Vienna (Architecture), the University of Applied Arts Vienna (Media Art), and the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (Textual Sculpture with Heimo Zobernig). Scholarships in Tokyo, Berlin, Mexico City, New York, and Sao Paulo. ­Exhibitions including at La Casa ­Encendida (Madrid), Austrian Cultural Forum Tokyo, Leslie Gallery (Berlin), VinVin ­Gallery (Vienna), Rubin & Chapelle (New York), and Kunstverein Bielefeld (Germany).

Established in 2020 by the curators and art historians Victoria Dejaco and Michael Wonnerth-Magnusson, WONNERTH DEJACO exhibits and represents local and international artists. Strongly connected with Austria’s contemporary art scene, we present and promote artists through our cross-disciplinary exhibition program as well as participation in art fairs. With a focus on emerging artists, we envision the gallery as a site of personal encounter and intellectual exchange where lively discourse is actively created and nurtured. Therefore, we encourage the artists who work with us to produce exhibitions that are challenging, innovative, and conceptually rigorous.