FOKUS

The group exhibition curated by Liv Vaisberg covered a total of 21 positions from 14 countries and brought together contemporary works that investigate the role of ornament both in design and as part of our daily life. By looking both backwards and forwards, the exhibition in the heart of the Festival Headquarters in the GEWÖLBE presented ornament as a means of sensual, critical, functional – and meaningful! – expression.

The scenography that granted this ornament its appropriate special status was the work of the young Viennese duo Easy-Center. Display stands of blue granular material, pink construction foam, gray shuttering, and organically curved panels soared from the densely sealed concrete floor in the entrance area of the festival headquarters. On top of this: objects, which the many exhibitors had designed, created, and delivered for presentation at the festival as expressions of the extraordinary and the poetic. The credit for the way in which the exhibits selected by the leading design expert Liv Vaisberg combined to create such a truly impressive overall narrative was shared equally between the guest curator and the exhibition designers. From decorative furnishings made from old coffee capsules to large-format stove ceramics, the presentation of the objects enabled them to communicate their most important quality: their extraordinariness.

The objective of this new group exhibition format FOCUS is to establish an arena for international and local positions. Every year, a guest curator selects objects that are submitted in response to a different subject and then presented at the festival in a specially commissioned spatial scenography.