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City Galerie Wien curated by Josef Strau & Kristoffer Cezinando Karlsen
„Telepathy Curating presents: Teases and Synthesis; Empty Threats, Vienna Love and Anxiety Reality Paradoxes“
9.9 - 4.10.2025
Press release 
City Galerie Wien, Weihburggasse 21
www.city-galerie-wien.com
www.city-galerie-wien.com
Curator(s):
Josef Strau & Kristoffer Cezinando Karlsen
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Josef Strau (born in Vienna) now lives and works in Vienna. Institutional solo exhibitions include Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf (2020); Künstlerhaus Bremen (2017); Secession, Vienna (2015); The Renaissance Society, University of Chicago (2014); and Malmö Konsthall, Sweden (2008). Group exhibitions include the Busan Biennale, Busan, South Korea (2020); Kunsthalle Bern (2017); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2016); mumok, Vienna (2015); the Liverpool Biennial (2014); Generali Foundation, Vienna (2012); and SculptureCenter, Long Island City, New York (2011).His work is in the collections of the Bundeskunstsammlung – The Federal Collection of Contemporary Art, Germany; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and the ZKM Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany.
Strau was also curator and the organizer of Galerie Meerrettich in the Pavilion at the Volksbuehne, Berlin and cofounded collaborative companies like “Montezuma”, “The Metaphysical Store” and “Single Moms” in New York and Mexico City and has as well published as writer in different publications and art magazines as October, Artforum, Texte zur Kunst, Parkett on Bernadette Corporation, Birgit Megerle, Wolfgang Tillmans, Isa Genzken, Mike Kelley, Ei Arakawa etc and in his own books and many independently produced editions.
Kristoffer Cezinando Karlsen (born in Oslo, Norway) is an artist, musician and founder of Oslo-based art space and record label Borgenheim Rosenhoff. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in visual art from Oslo National Academy of the Arts.
Courtesy Layr
Artist(s):
- Ethan Assouline
- Bogdan Ablozhnyy
- Mariia Andreeva
- Fabienne Audéoud
- Perfect Blue
- Keren Cytter
- Merlin Carpenter
- Nicolas Ceccaldi
- Olivia Coeln
- Courtesy
- Juliet Carpenter
- Albert Dietrich
- Ruth Angel Edwards
- Marius Engh
- Chloe Elgie
- Michaela Eichwald
- Elin
- Zoë Field
- Genoveva Filipovic
- Marie Yaël Fidesser
- Hélène Fauquet
- Nik Geene
- Evan Jose & Simon Glaser
- Julia Haller
- Katharina Hölzl
- Hannah Hansel (Flower Crime)
- Christian Ingemann
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Morag Keil More
* 1985, l. in London Morag Keil is living and working in London. Solo exhibitions include Artificial Intelligence, Isabella Bortolozzi, Berlin (2024), Needs & Wants, Jennys, New York (2023); A Life Less Ordinary (Sh*ll*w Gr*v*), Ivory Tars, Glasgow, Scotland (2021); L.I.B.E.R.T.Y, Project Native Informant, London (2014); Would you eat your friends?, Real Fine Arts, New York (2014); Potpourri, Cubitt, London (2013) and group exhibitions such as Art and Alienation at Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg (2025) and Lifes at Hammer Museum LA (2022).
- Kristoffer Karlsen
- Gretchen Lawrence
- Paul Levack
- Mel E. Logan
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Mathieu Malouf More
Malouf combines Pop Art, post-capitalist aesthetics, and internet culture. In recent works, he incorporates mushrooms and chemically refined gold. His golden paintings explore themes of reflection and illumination, embodying both artisanal precision and symbolic excess.
- Birgit Megerle
- Bjarne Melgaard
- Tomás Nervi
- Laurids Oder
- Marysia Paruzel
- Evelyn Plaschg
- Philipp Quehenberger
- Isak Ree
- Public Reptile
- Sydney Schrader
- Calle Segelberg
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Eirik Sæther More
* 1983, l. in Oslo
- Heji Shin
- Nora Schultz
- Anne Schmidt
- SALARY
- Superskin
- Universal Studio
- Josef Strau
- Nino Stelzl
- Stefan Tcherepnin
- Octavian Trauttmansdorff
- Bernadette Van-Huy
- Leonard van Vuuren
- Angharad Williams
- Wounder
- Morag Keil & Bedros Yeretzian
- Oren Yehoshua (DJ Yeriho)
- Julia Znoj
- Nina Zeljkovic
Exhibition text
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In their just initiated new collaborative curatorial enterprise Kristoffer Cezinando Karlsen and Josef Strau will show some friends in two very distinctively influential Viennese galleries. At Layr and at City. Leading out of broader and more general cultural stagnation, New Vienna Energy becomes attached with what was and what is known, with a the subject unknown and other usual reductions.
The complex artists list will connect the spirit of this particular general moment of the finally growing city with the international cultural phenomena of a still uncategorized change of artists self perceptions into artists self awareness. Because of phenomena like this one a place and a group can become an attractor. This long searched for but then just happens by chance. This is moment, this epoch, this attractor is until this day unnamed.
Imagining it as a convention of artists, underlined by including a third space to the two so explicitly distinguished gallery spaces. A studio used for live events and parties, music and reading, drinking and talking.
Dedicated to new conversations to the recent condition of artists, being here and now and how to make as much as possibly, making it a festival of events of celebrating the power of whatever subjectivities, celebrating the paradoxes, the contradictions and individualities from an a priori state of confusion and anxieties.
Very simple. Subjectivity means without seeking for permission and suggests not sharing it at all. Leaving the first and second space and moving on into a third one that hopefully wont be as revisionist and formal, in conditions that are more livable and less useless.
Videos
Photos
Installation view, Telepathy Curating presents: Teases and Synthesis; Empty Threats, Vienna Love and Anxiety Reality Paradoxes, Curated by, curated by Kristoffer Cezinando Karlsen and Josef Strau at City Galerie Wien and Layr, Vienna, 2025
Photo by Paul Makowsky
Installation view, Telepathy Curating presents: Teases and Synthesis; Empty Threats, Vienna Love and Anxiety Reality Paradoxes, Curated by, curated by Kristoffer Cezinando Karlsen and Josef Strau at City Galerie Wien and Layr, Vienna, 2025
Photo by Paul Makowsky
Installation view, Telepathy Curating presents: Teases and Synthesis; Empty Threats, Vienna Love and Anxiety Reality Paradoxes, Curated by, curated by Kristoffer Cezinando Karlsen and Josef Strau at City Galerie Wien and Layr, Vienna, 2025
Photo by Paul Makowsky
Installation view, Telepathy Curating presents: Teases and Synthesis; Empty Threats, Vienna Love and Anxiety Reality Paradoxes, Curated by, curated by Kristoffer Cezinando Karlsen and Josef Strau at City Galerie Wien and Layr, Vienna, 2025
Photo by Paul Makowsky
Installation view, Telepathy Curating presents: Teases and Synthesis; Empty Threats, Vienna Love and Anxiety Reality Paradoxes, Curated by, curated by Kristoffer Cezinando Karlsen and Josef Strau at City Galerie Wien and Layr, Vienna, 2025
Photo by Paul Makowsky
Installation view, Telepathy Curating presents: Teases and Synthesis; Empty Threats, Vienna Love and Anxiety Reality Paradoxes, Curated by, curated by Kristoffer Cezinando Karlsen and Josef Strau at City Galerie Wien and Layr, Vienna, 2025, Photo by Paul
Photo by Paul Makowsky
Installation view, Telepathy Curating presents: Teases and Synthesis; Empty Threats, Vienna Love and Anxiety Reality Paradoxes, Curated by, curated by Kristoffer Cezinando Karlsen and Josef Strau at City Galerie Wien and Layr, Vienna, 2025
Photo by Paul Makowsky
Installation view, Telepathy Curating presents: Teases and Synthesis; Empty Threats, Vienna Love and Anxiety Reality Paradoxes, Curated by, curated by Kristoffer Cezinando Karlsen and Josef Strau at City Galerie Wien and Layr, Vienna, 2025
Photo by Paul Makowsky
Installation view, Telepathy Curating presents: Teases and Synthesis; Empty Threats, Vienna Love and Anxiety Reality Paradoxes, Curated by, curated by Kristoffer Cezinando Karlsen and Josef Strau at City Galerie Wien and Layr, Vienna, 2025
Photo by Paul Makowsky
Installation view, Telepathy Curating presents: Teases and Synthesis; Empty Threats, Vienna Love and Anxiety Reality Paradoxes, Curated by, curated by Kristoffer Cezinando Karlsen and Josef Strau at City Galerie Wien and Layr, Vienna, 2025
Photo by Paul Makowsky
Bernadette Van-Huy, Perm (#12), 2021, pencil and inkjet print on paper, 32,6 x 24 cm, framed
Courtesy the artist Photo by Paul Makowsky
Installation view, Telepathy Curating presents: Teases and Synthesis; Empty Threats, Vienna Love and Anxiety Reality Paradoxes, Curated by, curated by Kristoffer Cezinando Karlsen and Josef Strau at City Galerie Wien and Layr, Vienna, 2025
Photo by Paul Makowsky
Bjarne Melgaard, Untitled, 1997, 30 x 21 cm
Courtesy the artist Photo by Paul Makowsky
Bjarne Melgaard, Untitled, 1997, 10.5 x 10.2 cm
Courtesy the artist Photo by Paul Makowsky
Bjarne Melgaard, Untitled, 1997, 28 x 21.5 cm
Courtesy the artist Photo by Paul Makowsky
Bjarne Melgaard, Beauty, 2025, Readymade, 120 x 90 x 30 cm (dimensions variable)
Courtesy the artist Photo by Paul Makowsky
Bjarne Melgaard, Beauty, 2025, Readymade, 120 x 90 x 30 cm (dimensions variable)
Courtesy the artist Photo by Paul Makowsky
Installation view, Telepathy Curating presents: Teases and Synthesis; Empty Threats, Vienna Love and Anxiety Reality Paradoxes, Curated by, curated by Kristoffer Cezinando Karlsen and Josef Strau at City Galerie Wien and Layr, Vienna, 2025
Photo by Paul Makowsky
Calle Segelberg, Untitled, 2025, Egg-tempera, guache and acrylic on linen, 95 x 65cm
Courtesy the artist & Christian Torp, Photo by Paul Makowsky
Calle Segelberg, Untitled, 2025, Egg-tempera, guache and acrylic on linen, 95 x 65cm
Courtesy the artist & Christian Torp, Photo by Paul Makowsky
Calle Segelberg, Untitled, 2025, Oil on linen, 96 x 65cm
Courtesy the artist & Christian Torp, Photo by Paul Makowsky
Calle Segelberg, Untitled, 2025, Egg-tempera, guache and acrylic on linen, 97 x 61 cm
Courtesy the artist & Christian Torp, Photo by Paul Makowsky
Installation view, Telepathy Curating presents: Teases and Synthesis; Empty Threats, Vienna Love and Anxiety Reality Paradoxes, Curated by, curated by Kristoffer Cezinando Karlsen and Josef Strau at City Galerie Wien and Layr, Vienna, 2025
Photo by Paul Makowsky
Installation view, Telepathy Curating presents: Teases and Synthesis; Empty Threats, Vienna Love and Anxiety Reality Paradoxes, Curated by, curated by Kristoffer Cezinando Karlsen and Josef Strau at City Galerie Wien and Layr, Vienna, 2025
Photo by Paul Makowsky
Installation view, Telepathy Curating presents: Teases and Synthesis; Empty Threats, Vienna Love and Anxiety Reality Paradoxes, Curated by, curated by Kristoffer Cezinando Karlsen and Josef Strau at City Galerie Wien and Layr, Vienna, 2025
Photo by Paul Makowsky
Genoveva Filipovic, Chain, 2025, Photography, 70.7 x 50.
Courtesy the artist, Photo by Paul Makowsky
Josef Strau, Heizkörperschmuck, 2025, Tin, magnets, stones, silver, Dimensions variable
Courtesy the artist & Layr, Vienna, Photo by Paul Makowsky
Josef Strau, Heizkörperschmuck, 2025, Tin, magnets, stones, silver, Dimensions variable
Courtesy the artist & Layr, Vienna Photo by Paul Makowsky
Mariia Andreeva, Positives (1), 2023, Silver gelatin print on baryta paper, 41 x 31 cm
Courtesy the artist, Photo by Paul Makowsky
Marysia Paruzel, Natalia, 2025, Silver gelatin print, 105 x 105 cm
Courtesy the artist, Photo by Paul Makowsky
Michaela Eichwald, (Mme) Persévérance, 2023, Acrylic on polyurethane fabric, 135 x 90 x 3 cm, 53 1/8 x 35 3/8 x 1 1/8 in
Courtesy the artist, Photo by Paul Makowsky
Michaela Eichwald, (Mme) Persévérance, 2023, Acrylic on polyurethane fabric, 135 x 90 x 3 cm, 53 1/8 x 35 3/8 x 1 1/8 in
Courtesy the artist, Photo by Paul Makowsky
Nina Zeljkovic, Berlin painting 2, 2025, Oil on canvas, 180 x 165 x 3,7 cm
Courtesy the artist, Photo by Paul Makowsky
Nora Schultz, To Tomorrow, 2025, b/w inkjet print on paper, 119.5 x 143 cm, Edition 2 + 1 AP
Courtesy the artist & MEYER*KAINER, Photo by Paul Makowsky
Nora Schultz, To Tomorrow, 2025, b/w inkjet print on paper, 119.5 x 143 cm, Edition 2 + 1 AP
Courtesy the artist & MEYER*KAINER, Photo by Paul Makowsky
Ruth Angel Edwards, What's not to like #3, 2025, Oil and acrylic on canvas, 92 x 73 cm
Courtesy the artist, Photo by Paul Makowsky
Ruth Angel Edwards, What's not to like #1, 2025, Oil and acrylic on canvas, 92 x 73 cm
Courtesy the artist, Photo by Paul Makowsky
Sydney Schrader, Emil, 2025, Steel, patina, 54 x 38 x 12 cm
Courtesy the artist & Lars Friedrich, Photo by Paul Makowsky
Sydney Schrader, Emil, 2025, Steel, patina, 54 x 38 x 12 cm
Courtesy the artist & Lars Friedrich, Photo by Paul Makowsky
