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.
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
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
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
All images © FEP