Vienna Contemporary 2025: Buzz on the floor
Vienna Contemporary opened at Messe Wien with a hum that carried through the halls, and at Munchies Art Club we entered ready to see what the contemporary art fair Vienna 2025 had to reveal.
People leaned in close, pointed, stepped back again. A stone bench painted in red letters - “THERE IS NOTHING ELSE” Lukas Thaler (represented by Galerie Elisabeth & Klaus Thoman).- caught the flow of bodies and for a moment set the tempo.
You felt the crowd pause, then break apart into smaller constellations: artists beside their work, collectors scanning, conversations starting without ceremony.
How the fair held its ground
The architecture of the fair slowed things down.
Curated sections pulled you toward single voices, solo rooms asked for patience, and younger galleries stood shoulder to shoulder with those carrying decades of memory.
Vienna Contemporary 2025: Sophia Süßmilch, presented by Krobath Gallery Vienna at Vienna Contemporary 2025.
This pacing mattered: it allowed stories to unfold rather than shout.
Digital misinformation, migration, feminist narratives, all surfaced not as slogans but as material, pigment, gesture.
A painting pressed against sculpture, a canvas opened into a conversation with its neighbor, and images moved between history and the now with intent.
Vienna Contemporary 2025: On the left Rosemarie Schwarzwälder, presented by Galerie nächst St. Stephan and on the right: Taisia Corbuț, presented by Gregor Podnar Gallery.
Encounters worth carrying
At WHOISPOLA, Julia Woronowicz’s canvases held the room.
They read like diaries written in paint: a teenage figure on a horse beneath a thin moon, not as fantasy but as a blunt stage for pain, cramps, and quiet strength.
Vienna Contemporary 2025: Julia Woronowicz presented by WHOISPOLA gallery.
Flowers and moths drifted in, clouds threatened flood, and the gaze stayed steady, a woman painting women without turning them into spectacle.
Across from them, Jan Baszak’s rough-edged horses pushed the air heavier. One stood on a spindle, mane falling like a relic; another, blackened, carried a bird on its back.
Together they made a booth that felt both fragile and mythic, present and haunted.
Vienna Contemporary 2025: On the left Larisa Sitar with Suprainfinit Gallery and on the right Anastasia Sosunova with Kim? Contemporary Art Centre. Two reliefs in conversation: ground and myth, touch and image.
Vienna Contemporary 2025: Genti Korini with Jecza Gallery on the left and Natália Sýkorová with VUNU Gallery - Bildrecht SOLO Award on the right. Two booth views at Vienna Contemporary 2025, each marked by strong presence and distinct vision.
When restraint speaks loudest
Elsewhere, restraint carried weight. Some artists let surface and pigment do the work, pulling you into the grain of color.
Vienna Contemporary 2025: Left: Tomasz Kulka with Van Rij Gallery. Right: Tamás Soós with Einspach & Czapolai Fine Art. Baroque-surreal painting meets a biomorphic modular tower: exuberance with calm weight.
Others used humor, sharp and exact, where a small joke twisted into a larger truth. A few spread painting wider, stretching scale until the walls themselves seemed to bend around it.
Vienna Contemporary 2025: CONTEXT curated by Samantha Ozer. Left / Right: Kurt Hüpfner with Galerie Dantendorfer.
The best encounters were not loud; they were the ones that held you long enough to change your pace.
Highlights that stayed
Christian Jankowski’s Neue Malerei at Suprainfinit Gallery cut through with a reminder of how images travel, break apart, and reform into new icons, and how visual languages shift when they move between contexts.
At Meyer Kainer, Ulrike Müller, this year’s winner of the Art for Stronger Democracies Prize, showed work that carried that clarity into sharp focus.
Clara Adolphs at Victor Lope Gallery and a tight selection at Galerie Krobath reinforced the sense that clarity, not volume, is what endures.
Vienna Contemporary 2025: Tobias Izsó with Christine König Gallery. A calibrated wooden assemblage arcs across the wall: domestic material made uncanny, memory held in precise joints.
These were presentations that asked little but gave much, proof that a fair can make space for depth even in the quick churn of September.
Vienna Contemporary 2025: Magdalena Lazar, with Bliss Gallery. New metalwork where welded lines become habitat: symbiosis over spectacle, overlooked life made visible, tenderness as strength.
Vienna in September
Vienna Contemporary sets the pace at Messe Wien, bringing local and international voices into one dynamic, curated space.
Vienna Contemporary 2025: Marko Djurdjevic with Galerie Gugging. Blue landscapes from walks with his dog Vincent; the pigment stains his fingers as much as the canvas.
Running alongside it are Parallel Vienna, which holds its ground in historic, raw settings, and Curated By Vienna, a city-wide gallery festival engaging international curators in intimate gallery venues.
Together with smaller events, these three anchor September as a rich, layered moment for Vienna’s vibrant contemporary art scene.
In Short:
If you're an art collector, a curator watching regional shifts, or a cultural traveler who prefers substance over spectacle, viennacontemporary is your September non-negotiable.
2025 Dates: September 11–14
Location: Messe Wien, Halle D
More Info: viennacontemporary.at
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Vienna’s premier art fair isn’t just another stop on the cultural calendar. It’s a strategic heartbeat of the European art scene with its ears pointed east.
Pre-Review: viennacontemporary 2025: Where Urgency Meets Curatorship
From September 11 -14, viennacontemporary returns to Messe Wien’s Hall D with sharpened focus and broader reach.
Under new artistic director Abaseh Mirvali, the 2025 edition assembles 102 exhibitors from 25 countries, including 38 from Central and Eastern Europe, solidifying the fair’s role as a critical bridge between East and West, politics and poetics.
Fresh from Vienna Contemporary: Zone 1 Artists Announced
Tobias IZSÓ The Accountant, 2025 Nussholz, Nussholzfurnier, Eichenfurnier, Perlohrring 152 x 47 x 39 cm | Image Courtesy and Permission Galerie Christine König for Vienna Contemporary
We are delighted to see Tobias Ilzsós, whom we featured in collaboration earlier, now presented at Vienna Contemporary.
Dominique Catherina Foertig
Tobias Ilzsós - Munchies Art Club Article
Within Zone 1, curated by Aliaksei Barysionak, Galerie Christine König showcases his practice. Ilzsós works across sculpture, installation and photography, using everyday objects in assemblages that reflect on memory, identity and the uncanny in domestic space.
Also part of the special exhibition Zone 1, artist Terese Kasalicky will be presented at Vienna Contemporary 2025 with Galerie3.
After being shown at Parallel Vienna in 2023, her practice now enters this curated format that highlights emerging voices in the city’s contemporary art scene.
Curated Confrontations: Algorithms, Displacement, Feminism
Three curated sections form the heart of the program: STATEMENT, CONTEXT, and ZONE1.
From algorithmic disinformation in Realities Building (curated by Marcella Beccaria) to solo exhibitions in ZONE1 highlighting migration, war, and feminist narratives by artists under 40, the fair puts urgency on display.
Meanwhile, VC Vault, a newly introduced format by Antonia Lia Orsi (City Galerie), brings together eight emerging galleries from across Seoul, Oslo, and beyond, emphasizing experimentation over spectacle.
More Than a Fair: Vienna Becomes the Venue
Parallel exhibitions and performances ripple across the city.
With institutional partners like the Belvedere, mumok, Kunsthalle Wien, and the Heidi Horten Collection, viennacontemporary blurs the line between fair and city.
Timed alongside Parallel Vienna and Curated by, the Austrian capital becomes a living map of contemporary art urgent, discursive, alive.
In Short:
If you're an art collector, a curator watching regional shifts, or a cultural traveler who prefers substance over spectacle, viennacontemporary is your September non-negotiable.
2025 Dates: September 11–14
Location: Messe Wien, Halle D
More Info: viennacontemporary.at
Past Vienna Contemporary Highlights:
2024
Dominique Catherina Foertig
Special Aperrence - Kogo Gallery
Dominique Catherina Foertig
Munchies Art Club in collaborations with Vienna Contemporary and Zone 1
Dominique Catherina Foertig
Minda Andren - Zone 1 - Vienna Contemporary 2024
Dominique Catherina Foertig
Sebastian Schachinger - Zone 1 - Vienna Contemporary 2025
2023
Dominique Catherina Foertig
Vienna contemporary
CATAPULT – Curated Art Signals
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