Veteran dealer Eva Presenhuber is opening a new gallery in Vienna, in her native country of Austria.
The new location—the second Presenhuber will have opened since the onset of the pandemic—will welcome visitors in March in the opulent first district, one of Vienna’s most famous and architecturally interesting areas (and notably away from the city’s gallery hub).
“In difficult times, you have to look forward rather than think you can’t do anything anymore, and that you have to just save money,” she said of opening a new gallery during a pandemic. “Difficult times also offer opportunities. It makes you stronger. The artists like that you’re not stopping. It gives them strength.”
The space on Lichtenfelsgasse street is just steps from the Austrian parliament and within walking to the Kunsthistorisches Museum.
Presenhuber will inagurate the location with a solo exhibition of new paintings by gallery artist Tobias Pils, who is known for his vividly figurative grayscale oil paintings.
Tobias Pils, The space between us (2021). © Tobias Pils. Courtesy Galerie Eva Presenhuber
Photo: Jorit Aust
The exhibition, titled “Between Us Space,” will feature an intervention by another Austrian in the program, Gerwald Rockenschaub. The rest of the year will feature solo exhibitions by Sam Falls, Michael Williams, Karen Kilimnik, and Joe Bradley.
It will be Presenhuber’s fourth location, in addition to her two galleries in Zurich and one in New York.
“I go back and forth to [Austria] quite a lot and I have to say that Vienna really is one of the most attractive cities when it comes to architecture and city planning,” she said. “I don’t care so much where the other galleries are. It’s more about having a space where I like to spend time.”
Presenhuber also owns an apartment in the building that she will lend out to visiting artists.
The art dealer, who got her start in Zurich in 1989 as director of Galerie Walcheturm, has been eager to return home to Vienna in some way, and finally found the opportunity during the holidays when she stumbled upon the new space.
“It is a very arts-oriented city, much more than Zurich,” she said. “Art is much more valued in a cultural way.”
Save for Galerie König, which has locations in multiple countries and which opened an outpost in Vienna last year, the city’s gallery scene remains relatively local. But it has deep roots in art history, esteemed museums, a well-informed public, and wealthy collectors.
Among the artists in Presenhuber’s program are Ugo Rondinone, Carroll Dunham, Angela Bulloch, Liam Gillick, and Austrian sculptor Franz West, who died in 2012.