Four decades ago, a love of art and the desire to hang contemporary art in the office buildings were the decisive reasons for Hans Peter Haselsteiner and founding director Wilhelm Weiß to start building up a company collection, which was still very rare at the time. Initially, the focus was on art from Carinthia, but contact was soon sought with artists and galleries throughout Austria. With the announcement of the first art prize for the promotion of young Austrian artists in 1994, the spectrum of the collection's activities was expanded to include diverse, young positions. The art prize was awarded in Klagenfurt until 2002, by which time the collection had grown to over 1,000 works, made possible by the rapid, positive development and expansion of the construction group. In 2004, the STRABAG Haus, the new company headquarters, was opened in Vienna and the STRABAG Art Forum was relocated from Carinthia to Vienna.
The STRABAG Artcollection is a constantly growing, versatile and wandering collection that includes changing locations and works by artists of all generations. The identification of employees with the images surrounding them, as well as positive criticism, contributes to an inspired atmosphere and increased awareness of their own surroundings. Engaging with art in the workplace has a motivating effect and encourages a lively exchange of ideas. This openness of thought is also reflected in the transparency of the Group's architecture. The works of art are by no means kept in a depot or museum, but are located at over 60 STRABAG SE Group sites in Germany and abroad. The STRABAG Kunstforum team creates overall curatorial concepts for the respective buildings, taking into account the architectural conditions.
The STRABAG Artlounge
A spacious, two-storey gallery space, the STRABAG Artlounge, opened on the top floor of the new company headquarters, and a structure integrated into the building - the Gironcoli-Kristall - enabled the permanent presentation of nine sculptures by Bruno Gironcoli.
The art prize has been awarded as the STRABAG Artaward International since 2009. In the same year, the STRABAG Artstudio was opened in the STRABAG Haus: An artist-in-residence program for all collection artists and all STRABAG Artaward-winning artists. The STRABAG Artlounge on the top floor of STRABAG Haus in Vienna is a unique exhibition space that invites STRABAG employees, business partners and external visitors interested in art to enjoy art.
The STRABAG Artlounge presents itself as an exciting and interesting two-storey exhibition space. In contrast to the usual, sterile white cube, the Artlounge offers a wonderful panoramic view of the whole of Vienna thanks to its glass façade. Artists and their artworks correspond and interact with their surroundings, but also have to assert themselves in relation to them.
Since its opening in 2004, more than 120 exhibitions have been shown in the STRABAG Artlounge: All artists who have won the STRABAG Artaward International are given the opportunity to hold a solo exhibition in the Artlounge. In addition, one or two exhibitions a year are dedicated to long-standing collection artists.
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STRABAG Artaward International
Based on the core markets of Austria and Germany, STRABAG SE is a European technology group for construction services that operates successfully in selected markets in Western Europe, in Eastern and South-Eastern European countries and increasingly on other continents. Thanks to the commitment of 73,000 employees, STRABAG is a company that can offer services along the entire construction value chain. STRABAG SE unites major construction brands under one roof. With their long history of success, they stand for professional competence, customer orientation and reliability. Partnership, commitment and solidarity are just some of the values that are anchored in the Group's activities.
In addition to economic and ecological responsibility, cultural and social commitment is sustainably integrated at STRABAG SE: the STRABAG Art Forum - founded back in the 1990s at the company headquarters in Spittal/Drau - successfully bridges the gap between business and art. To promote young artists, an annual art prize has been awarded since 1994, which was initially limited to Austria and has also been awarded in selected other European countries as the STRABAG Artaward International since 2009.
In the years 2024-2026, the STRABAG Artaward International will be awarded in the following countries: Germany, Slovenia and Austria.
Grzegorz Siembida, Gra w klasy, 2023, oil, acrylic, spray on canvas, 180 x 130 cm, photo: Szymon Sokołowski
GRZEGORZ SIEMBIDA. STORYTELLER
A sky full of dreams, a dazzling painting space filled with the lively lightness of clouds, straight out of the comic universe - this is Grzegorz Siembida's current world of painting.
The paintings from his "Storyteller" series are canvases whose image sequences - mainly arranged in "rectangles" and clouds - refer to the nature of comic stories. Siembida uses their structure to vitalize her narrative forms through the articulation of different visual languages. The process of using speech bubbles, familiar from comics, is an area of creativity in which Siembida combines expressive gestural abstraction with a narrative element. His comic paintings are broken down into formal components: In each sequence, a different painting problem is accentuated, and so in one of the marked areas there is a clean splatter mark with circular hand movements, in another a watercolor underpainting conceals a dense drawing. But there are also splatter marks that are reminiscent of hasty scribbles, typical of street art. In another cloud, the colors are lined up as if on a palette in search of the right color.
Grzegorz Siembida's subject is painting as an experiment in itself. Although unspoken, his usual ruminations on a capitalist structure are conveyed through an excursion of forms across art history. In abstraction paired with an inventive and humorous verve of comic book aesthetics, it produces a striking artistic language. It moves and encourages us to think about the limits of art and the possibilities of spontaneous expression.
February 16 to March 15, 2024
www.strabag-kunstforum.at
