Encounters

Galerie ArtPoint: A Venue of Discourse and Diversity

Annemarie Türk

KKA’s decision to set up our own exhibition space went hand in hand with the development of the KKA Artists in Residence programme. Inviting artists from Eastern and South Eastern Europe to spend time in Vienna and making it possible for them to gain new experiences and establish new contacts is just as important as giving them an opportunity to present their works.

The first KKA-exhibitions were held at the newly opened Quartier 21 of the MuseumsQuartier. After KKA moved to its new location in 2005, the exhibition space Galerie ArtPoint was opened at Universitätsstraße 5.
Since 2002, KKA has presented more than 60 exhibitions: seven per year. Four of these annual exhibitions are reserved for KKA Artists in Residence; the other three introduce artists and projects that KKA considers to be of high quality but that have no such opportunity anywhere else. To date, over 200 artists have been presented. They have come from Russia and Albania, from Armenia, from the Republics of Moldova and Croatia, from Montenegro and the Ukraine – to name just a few of these gifted young people’s countries of origin. They work in and with a wide variety of artistic media: painting and drawing, photography, video, installations and sculpture.

This exhibition space also serves as a platform for curators, and in many cases gives them their first opportunity to present an exhibition concept in Vienna. Galerie ArtPoint has never pursued commercial interests, but has always been conceived as an opportunity to communicate with a broad public, to enter into dialogue and to cultivate exchange. The art exhibition space is now well established; it has become a meeting place for artists, curators, gallery owners and museum professionals as well as media representatives. The KKA staff as well as schoolteachers and pupils, professors and students of universities and academies of fine arts are regularly invited to enjoy new artistic encounters. It is very important to KKA to constantly expand the circle of those who take an interest in the activities at Galerie ArtPoint and also to include people from Eastern and South Eastern Europe who have found a new home in Austria.

KKA wants Galerie ArtPoint to be an animated venue of encounter, where a broad public can be introduced to contemporary art from Eastern and South Eastern Europe as well as to the region itself.

The exhibitions are an invitation to engage in dialogue in the broadest sense of the word, and Galerie ArtPoint is a venue of lively artistic discourse and genuine European integration.

www.kulturkontakt.or.at/artpoint