Opening: June 24, 2021
Duration: June 25–27, 2021

silvia steinek galerie presents a selection of artworks exploring the two main fields dealt with by the artist, such as seriality through modernist and postmodern social architecture as from the series Unugly Buildings (2013-2016) or Variations - Kulturengeflechte (2016-2017) and individuality through detailed representations of personal items left behind, like in the series Direct Transit (since 2017). Watercolor drawings and oil paintings are in dialogue and investigate traces of Fabian Erik Patzak's family history which is part of our larger collective history.

Opening: October 22, 2020
Duration: October 22–December 31, 2020

Artists: Renate Bertlmann, Robert Barry, Joseph Binder, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Sébastien de Ganay, Olga Georgieva, Albert Paris Gütersloh, Matthias Herrmann, Christian Macketanz, Otto Muehl, Hermann Nitsch, Fabian Erik Patzak, Gudrun Kampl, Nina Werzhbinskaja-Rabinowich, Dieter Roth, Clemens Wolf

For the fifth time, Erste Bank is awarding the ExtraVALUE Art Award to an artist who has participated in the program of das weisse haus / studio das weisse haus. The prize includes a solo exhibition in das weisse haus (April 22 – June 06, 2020) and a one month stay in New York City in July 2020 as a source of inspiration, as well as to establish new contacts and expand his network.

Carried out in the two stage competition, the jury has decided in favor of Fabian Erik Patzak and his exhibition concept "Direct Transit." Following a first round, which assessed the artistic quality on the basis of the submitted portfolios, eleven candidates were invited to develop a concept for the presentation in das weisse haus. Presented by the artists, these proposals were then judged in a second round.

Opening: February 25, 2020, 6pm
Duration: February 25–March 7, 2020
155a Lordship Lane, East Dulwich, London
Curated by Robyn Graham

Artists: Bianca Barandun, Tristan Barlow, Rachael Bos, Ryan Browning, Elena Gileva, Charlie Goering, Callum Green, Michael Kaul, Jeff Kraus, Anders Lindseth, Lucienne O’Mara, Fabian Erik Patzak, Sébastien Pauwels, Arran Rahimian, Erin Skiffington, Maxima Smith, Laila Tara H, Hanna ten Doornkaat, Sean Tseng, Amy Winstanley, Jiyoung Yoo

Warbling is pleased to present ‘To all our absent dialogues’ an exhibition of 21 international artists all working within varied practices including painting, sculpture, photography, video and installation.
Whether we communicate solely through our gestures or speak to each other in differing languages, we are often absent in one dialogue yet present in another. An interpretation, assumption or preconceived idea. As there are infinite ways to experience the same moment, object, space or connection, all depends on our existing knowledge and framework, which we have built up to that point. Words interwoven to apply new purpose to something which originally embodied a different meaning altogether.
The exhibition explores how our understandings often abstract an original idea, between a painters gesture and the painting, cultural perspectives and separate contexts, the potentiality of everything to be something else entirely.

The Loos House on Vienna’s Michaelerplatz in the form of a New York skyscraper as a symbol of uprooting through migration: In his project DIRECT TRANSIT, Fabian Erik Patzak interweaves his own artistic work with the story of the flight of his Jewish grandparents and great-grandparents on his mother’s side. The starting point for the profound reflection on issues such as forced displacement, inheritance and transgenerational memory were family events in recent years – from birth and death to serious illnesses – but also the strengthening of nationalism on both sides of the ocean, as well as recent migratory movements. In a showcase of the Visual Storage at the Jewish Museum Vienna, historical objects closely connected with the life of the family in Vienna before their escape in 1938 come upon painted images of objects that stand for the journey to the USA and life in the “new homeland.”

The Visual Storage has repeatedly been the site of artistic interventions in recent years. Here, where the many-faceted collections of the museum are preserved and presented, and the past and present of the Jewish history of Vienna meet, DIRECT TRANSIT tells of a family’s relationship to this city, of expulsion, of coming back and looking back.

Dr. Astrid Peterle

We are very happy to share that Fabian Erik Patzak is the 2018 Naomi Anolic Early Career Jewish Visual Arts Award recipient! Fabian's work and statement really moved the judges. Now more than ever we must always keep social and political justice in mind. Here is a brief excerpt from Fabian's proposal: "Increased political nationalism on both sides of the Atlantic has led me to revisit the trauma and upheaval experienced by the Jewish side of my family beginning in late 1930s Nazi Austria and their eventual flight to the United States. The project Direct Transit draws together objects, records, imagery, stories, and inspiration from what little of my family history has survived, and uses these to create documentary and imagined works on migration, loss, and multi-generational memory, bringing a very personal history into dialogue with contemporary debates on war, migration, and religious discrimination."

Opening: November 30, 2017, 7:30pm
Duration: November 31-December 30, 2017
Galerie Z, Hard, AT
Curated by Bernhard Buhmann

Artists: Christian Bazant-Hegemark, Bernhard Buhmann, Svenja Deininger, Stefanie De Vos, Daniel Domig, Georg Frauenschuh, Christian Hutzinger, Luisa Kasalicky, Alex Kiessling, Philip Müller, Robert Muntean, Katherina Olschbaur, Fabian Patzak, Drago Persic, Katrin Plavcak, Alfons Pressnitz, Markus Proschek, Bianca Regl, Alex Ruthner, Francis Ruyter, Stylianos Schicho, Käthe Schönle, Martina Steckholzer, Maja Vukoje, Micha Wille, Clemens Wolf, Gerlind Zeilner

Opening: April 14, 2017, 7pm
Duration: April 6–May 31, 2017
Galerie Trapp, Salzburg, AT

with Hein Spellmann

Opening: October 20, 2016, 6–9pm
Duration: October 21–November 19, 2016
Galerie Gans, Vienna, AT

with Frank Webster

Opening: May 7, 2015, 7pm
Duration: May 8–June 21, 2015
Loft 8, Vienna, AT

Sensing Architecture

Fabian Patzak and Frank Webster exhibit related yet distinct approaches to their respective urban environments. Patzak’s tightly composed oil paintings depict organized versions of actual buildings in a rather muted palate that have been reduced to their essence. The subjects of his New York-based colleague, on the other hand, consist of shadows of buildings against gleaming dawn or dusk red skies with painted treetop silhouettes. The paintings on exhibition offer viewers entry to the heretofore under acknowledged beauty of European modernist buildings and seemingly abandoned locations in New York. Both Patzak and Webster wander their cities on the lookout for motifs and with a penchant for the urban fringe. A hidden socio-critical undertone lies within the oeuvres of both artists, and is all the more effective for its subtlety. Urbanism is elevated to an entirely new level through painting, these works can be seen as swan songs for perhaps soon-to-vanish facets of our modern habitat the metropolis.

Wolfgang Pichler

Opening: October 3, 2013
Duration: October 4–November 23, 2013
Galerie Günter Salzmann, Innsbruck, AT
Curated by Elisabeth Längle

Artists: Siegrun Appelt, Cristina Fiorenza, Markus Hofer, Jochen Höller, Darina Kmetova, Ulrike Lienbacher, Fabian Patzak, Gilles-Henri Polge


Installation views by Darina Kmetova

Opening: February 14, 2013
Duration: February 15–March 17, 2013
Lukas Feichtner Gallery, Vienna AT

Opening: January 17, 2013
Duration: January–March, 2013
Sotheby's Vienna, AT

Opening: May 16, 2012
Duration: May 17–August 26, 2012
Austrian Cultural Forum NY, USA
Curated by Amanda McDonald Crowley

Artists: Sabine Bitter/Helmut Weber, Judith Fegerl, Rainer Ganahl, Matthias Herrmann, Johanna Kandl, Mathias Kessler, Fabian Patzak, Rainer Prohaska, Time's Up, Wochenklausur

The Austrian Cultural Forum has launched the exhibition Our Haus in celebration of its ten year anniversary. Curated by Amanda McDonald Crowley, Our Haus forgoes a typical survey, instead examining the many facets of the Forum’s mission as a place for the presentation of contemporary culture, as a center for the discussion of ideas and establishing cross-cultural relationships. These aspects are presented through recent and newly-commissioned works by ten artists with ties to Austria and New York, who employ the landmark architecture of the Forum to explore themes that celebrate the history and mission of the ACFNY and its role within the city.

The show's bilingual title, Our Haus, speaks to these bilateral cultural navigations. The works included in Our Haus explore the relationship between the building and it’s environment and the architecture of New York, while simultaneously providing the audience with an invitation to participate in the discussion. Our Haus is an exhibition that recognizes the ACFNY as a cultural center, but also as a space for conversation, contradiction, intimacy, and conviviality.

Opening: September 3, 2009
Duration: September 4–October 3, 2009
MUSA Startgalerie, Vienna, AT

A Master of Reductionist Architectures of Desire

If there is such a thing as a young contemporary generation of painters, and if, as it seems, they show a strong interest in spatial depictions, then Fabian Patzak is undoubtedly one of their most outstanding representatives. The atmosphere of his reductionist, almost sober oil paintings are reminiscent of Edward Hopper or Charles Sheeler, however Patzak’s grisaille palette renders them more condensed. Even before having read their titles, they portray quintessentially American interiors suggestive of classics by Hitchcock, Woody Allen, or Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy; spaces that narrate vastness and openness as well as the intensity of New York as a center of the arts - without catering to drama or kitsch. His oil-on-wood miniatures possess an even more impressive intensity: among them, Windows on Oxford Street, which resembles a linocut, subtly breaks the subject’s sobriety.

The prevailing mood of solitude, that alongside their interest in space distinguishes this generation of young Viennese artists, is intensely present in Patzak’s work. Solitude expressed through emptiness, dominates the interior paintings in this exhibition. One is literally drawn into these completely refined idylls, and begins to relish the peace and breadth, because – although it might not sound like it - Fabian Patzak’s paintings are anything but depressing or melancholic; he paints the silence amidst turmoil. He paints what could be seen if all things unclear, hectic, confusing were to vanish from the scene, and only the “now” remain. The works on exhibit are architectures of desire, quite capable of communicating this silence.

Wolfgang Pichler