PARALLEL VIENNA 2025
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PARALLEL VIENNA 2025
September 10-14, 2025
Otto Wagner Area
Baumgartner Höhe 1
1140 Vienna
This year, ARTCARE is once again participating in PARALLEL VIENNA 2025 as a platform for young and contemporary art. True to our mission of providing a stage for emerging artists, we are delighted to be able to use three spaces in the Otto Wagner Areal this year.
PAVILION 7
ROOM 008: Lukas Soldo
ROOM 016: Louise Deininger
PAVILION 13
ROOM 302: In cooperation with Art House Simacek, we present works by the winners and selected nominees of the Simacek Award 2025 .
ARTCARE
Lukas Soldo
Pavilion 7
Room 008
Lukas Soldo's painting defies any quick interpretation.
She doesn't simply depict something, but allows the image itself to appear in a state of becoming. Every surface, every layer, every correction is part of a process that inscribes itself on the surface. The images don't merely document an act; they bear witness to their own creation and the ongoing tension between control and uncontrollability.
The Austrian artist works in dense, impasto layers on finely stretched cotton, creating a sculptural presence. The painting develops independently: the original plan is altered during the process, yet every movement remains direct and clear. Overpainting and corrections are not mistakes, but conscious decisions made in dialogue with color and material. Thus, the process itself becomes the content of the works. The paintings emerge from a constant negotiation between intention and chance, between what is conceived and what the color and material bring forth. The surface bears the traces: something concrete arises from nothingness.
While the materiality, heavy, massive, almost sculptural, pushes into the space, the soft color palette opens up a space of delicacy. This tension between weight and lightness, between relief and transparency, leads to a paradoxical experience: the painting appears monumental and vulnerable at the same time.
This results in a painting of the in-between: between figuration and abstraction, between object and image, between nature and artifice. The tree or plant resemblances that occasionally appear are less motifs than metaphors for becoming and growth: for an emergence from conditions that are never fully controllable.
Soldo's practice could thus also be understood as a form of meditation: not in the sense of tranquility or contemplation, but as a constant questioning of being through the medium of painting. Here, painting is not an instrument of representation, but a place where what is reveals itself: in its fragility, its complexity, its openness.
Lukas Soldo (*2001, Vienna) studied abstract painting at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna under Michaela Eichwald and most recently also under Thomas Winkler.
Lukas Soldo, Untitled, oil on cotton, each 40cm x 45cm, 2025.
Lukas Soldo, Untitled, acrylic and gesso on canvas, 140cm x 200cm, 2024.
Lukas Soldo, Untitled, oil and acrylic on (stiff) cotton, 100cm x 120cm, 2024.
Photo: Lukas Soldo
ARTCARE
Louise Deininger
Pavilion 7
Room 016
At this year's Parallel, conceptual artist Louise Deininger presents RETURN TO LOVE : an installation conceived as a ritual and open space. It functions as a living altar, a place of mourning, reflection, and becoming, open to gestures, traces, and offerings. The work is not a finished monument, but an evolving field that explores the tensions between loss and renewal, silence, love, and collective resonance. Visitors are invited to leave their own traces, such as notes, drawings, or objects, and thus become part of an ongoing conversation about love, loss, memory, and transformation.
The installation derives its power from the materials used by the Kenyan-born, Ugandan-raised artist and the stories they carry. Kanga fabric, printed with proverbs, speaks as both textile and text, embodying the resilience of Black women across generations. Elephant dung, linked to the artist's family totem, anchors the work in cycles of fertility, decay, and renewal, transforming the repulsive into the sacred. Barkcloth, once banned by colonial laws, is re-enacted here with dignity, while cowrie shells recall economic systems and spiritual practices that preceded colonial violence. Acrylic on canvas, a medium with a colonial history, is used in this work as a site of appropriation and resistance.
The personal dimension of the work is evident at the center of the altar: there lies a portrait of Raimund, the artist's recently deceased husband, next to an open book in which visitors can add their own messages. His presence is not monumentalized, but rather held as a silent witness and companion. The book extends the altar beyond the artist, transforming it into a shared vessel of remembrance.
For Louise Deininger, her art is soul work: a stitching together of what has been torn apart: Black memory, land, identity, spirituality. Through the acknowledgment of personal loss, the installation becomes both profoundly intimate and open to the community. It raises questions about how we remember and heal, without expecting definitive answers.
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Upon entering RETURN TO LOVE , one does not step into a closed space, but into an open, porous environment. At its center stands a table conceived as an altar, serving as the focal point of the installation. Around this core, the work unfolds as an evolving altar: a space of mourning and transformation, open to gestures, marks, and offerings. It is not a fixed memorial, but an evolving field that holds the balance between loss and renewal, between silence, love, and collective resonance.
The installation draws its strength from materials that carry their own voices and histories. Kanga cloth, patterned with proverbs, speaks as both textile and text, embodying the resilience of black women's narratives across generations. Elephant dung, linked to the artist's family totem, anchors the work in cycles of fertility, decay, and renewal, transforming the abject into the sacred. Bark cloth, once outlawed by colonial decree, is re-inscribed with dignity, while cowrie shells recall economies and spiritual practices that predate colonial violence. Even acrylic on canvas, a medium inherited from colonial art history, is re-appropriated here as a site of resistance and reclamation.
Through these materials, RETURN TO LOVE stages an act of decolonial remembering. It is not simply an installation, but a ritual environment where ecological kinship, ancestral memory, and artistic experimentation converge. The space invites visitors to leave a trace - a note, a drawing, a fragment - and in doing so to become part of an ongoing conversation about love and loss, identity and resilience, memory and transformation.
For Louise Deininger, this work is soul work : a stitching together of what has been torn apart: Black memory, land, identity, spirituality. In acknowledging the loss of her partner, RETURN TO LOVE becomes at once profoundly intimate and widely communal. It asks how we remember, how we heal, while accepting that these questions have no final answers. In this sense, the work is a space for reflection, for gathering, and for the slow work of wholeness that is always still to come.
ARTCARE X ART HOUSE SIMACEK
SIMACEK AWARD 2025
Winners & Nominees
Pavilion 13
Room 302
This year we have the special opportunity to collaborate with Art House SIMACEK to use an additional space. The exhibition will feature works by both winners and nominees of the SIMACEK AWARD 2025 – a multifaceted encounter of diverse artistic perspectives.
The exhibited works encompass a wide spectrum: from paintings on canvas to sculptural and installation-based approaches. This creates an exciting artistic dialogue that invites visitors to discover new perspectives and talents early on and experience them directly.
The works presented are from our current exhibition CONTACT ZONES , which will therefore remain closed from September 5th to 15th at Rechte Bahngasse. Between September 10th and 14th, the works can be seen as part of Parallel 2025 in the space at the Otto Wagner Areal, before the exhibition subsequently reopens at Rechte Bahngasse.
Artists: Arina Grinevich
Chorong Moon
Dalmonia Rognean
Duy Hung Ngo
Lisa Obereder
Lotti Brockmann
Ludwig Stalla
Olga Shcheblykina
Ömer Faruk Kaplan
Paria Sharestani
Kweku Okokroko
Valentino Skarwan
