Preview

On Tuesday, September 16, we reopen with a Pop-Up Week!

For the first time the FOTOGALERIE WIEN will be hosting a pop-up week with various actions, talks, screenings and presentations will be made. This will give a foretaste of NARRATIVE, our focal point for 2025/2026. The first exhibition in the series, Topografie der Erinnerung (The Topography of Memory) will be showing works by artists who are engaged with, on the one hand, (subjective) memories and their visual embodiment and, on the other, with the pictorial histories that emerge from archive materials.

TUESDAY, 16 SEPTEMBER, 5–9 PM
Finissage: JOJO GRONOSTAY, Logo Lamp 06, in the DISPLAY CABINET: 5–9 pm
Presentation of the publication Eating the Other: 6 pm

The publication accompanying Jojo Gronostay’s exhibition Logo Lamp 06 in the DISPLAY CABINET collects together photographic material from online stores, articles and research sources that are concerned with questions such as how visual codes change, how politics impacts fashion and the relationship between aesthetic surfaces and ideological depths. The title of the publication is taken from the text by bell hooks, Eating the Other.

Jojo Gronostay, publication Eating the Other

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Talk: CARLA ÅHLANDER in conversation with AARON AMAR BHAMRA (in English): 7 pm

Berlin-based Swedish artist Carla Åhlander talks to Aaron Amar Bhamra, our first DISPLAY CABINET artist, about her work. She works primarily with photography and explores themes like memory, history, and structures in the everyday. When her images are not taken directly from her own family history, they often depict situations she encounters in public spaces, which she approaches in a matter-of-fact, unspectacular manner. The people in her photos often seem trapped in their situation, appearing lost and isolated from the outside world. The element of time often plays a significant role in her work. Carla Åhlander is a lecturer at the Berlin
University of the Arts and Bard College Berlin, among others. She is currently participating in steirischer herbst ’25.

Aaron Amar Bhamra is an artist based in Vienna. He often procures exhibition spaces that subtly expose their systematics and physical experience by incorporating imprints reminiscent of other spaces or past exhibitions. Bhamra works and teaches at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, Expanded Museum Studies, and is currently a lecturer at the Vienna University of Technology, Raumgestaltung und Entwerfen. In 2020, he co-founded Laurenz, an exhibition space for artistic experimentation and discourse in Vienna, which he co-directs with Monika Georgieva.

Carla Åhlander, Auflösung II, 2013, silver gelatine print on baryta paper, 30 x 40 cm

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WEDNESDAY, 17 SEPTEMBER, 7 PM
Film screening: JOERG BURGER, Archiv der Zukunft, followed by a discussion between the artist and ROBERT ILLEK, chief taxidermist at the Natural History Museum Vienna (in German).

Joerg Burger, Archiv der Zukunft, Austria 2023, 92 min., German with English subtitles. Direction, camera and shooting concept: Joerg Burger

Joerg Burger, Still from: Archiv der Zukunft

With painstaking energy, the Natural History Museum Vienna collects, researches, archives and reflects on more than thirty million objects. Brought together over centuries, these are regularly re-examined. Archiv der Zukunft offers a glimpse behind the scenes of a museum which is steeped in tradition and which – away from the well-known displays in glass-cases – reveals a microcosm of institutional research intent on meeting current social challenges. A filmic homage to the significance of science and an insightful consideration of life on earth – and elsewhere.

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SATURDAY, 20 SEPTEMBER, 5–9 PM
Opening: HANS SCHABUS, Was nicht da ist, DISPLAY CABINET: 5–9 pm
Duration: 21 September 2025–14 February 2026

In this exhibition, you can see parts of a sign with the word “Maintenant.”
That is French and means “Now.” The sign was part of an art project last year —
for an exhibition in France.

The project was about activism (that means protest) and art.
Both activism and art want to make something visible.
When something is important, we need to show it — best of all, now.
The sign with the word “Maintenant” reminds us:
Do something — and do it now!

On the way to France, a photo was taken.
The artist was carrying the sign.
The photo captures a moment — just a brief second
between before and after.

For the exhibition, the sign was cut into pieces.
That way, it fits into the display case.
It shows: Time — and even a word — can break into parts.
In the end, one question remains: What is not there?

This text was created according to the rules of plain language, with the help of AI.

Hans Schabus, Maintenant (Monument for People on the Move), 2024, photo: Atelier Schabus

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Documenting the Everyday: Vernacular Photography as Historical Narrative
Talk: MASHA WYSOCKA and RÓZA TEKLA SZILÁGY (in English): 7 pm

This dialogue is intended to generate discussion about everyday photography, photo archives and research into them. The Belgian-Spanish multidisciplinary artist, Masha Wysocka is concerned with research based projects about historical, scientific and political subject matter. She is presenting her project, Truth is Stranger than Fiction, in the form of an artist’s book. The project aims at creating a discourse between the archive collections of the „Blinken Open Society Archives“ (Budapest), an archive established in 1996, whose archival materials originate from the communist period Róza Tekla Szilágyi is co-founder and director of the „Eidolon Centre“ in Budapest which is dedicated to presenting, researching, analysing and publishing photographs of everyday life, image-generating everyday products and projects which work with this kind of pictorial material. She was the editor of the publication Fortepan Masters, a volume created from the Fortepan collection, conceived and selected by Szabolcs Barakonyi. Eidolon Centre cooperates with Fortepan, and is also an official institutional partner of the Horus-Archive.

Masha Wysocka, Truth is Stranger than Fiction, photo by an unknown author from the archive collection – Private Photo and Film Foundation in the Open Society Archive (Budapest, Hungary)

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