Curated By: Love — The Dark and the Beautiful Sides

In some editions of the Vienna Gallery Festival, one could say the theme was completely missed when the specified motto was simply ignored. This year, that’s out of the question. Because this 17th edition is titled “Love”—and is thus so broadly defined that everything fits within it.

This is impressively demonstrated by Ariana Reines’ somewhat naive essay: Writing in the first person, the American author manages to pack in as many names, aspects, keywords, and tangents as is practically possible. These essays are a staple of every edition and serve as a guide for the invited curators. This year, however, that’s hardly necessary, as the 24 galleries prove.

Their curators explore concepts ranging from the poetic to the political to the dark—as when, for example, Anya Harrison speaks in “Requiem” for Nächst St. Stephan about the dark side of love, loss, pain, and farewell, all the way to Penny Goring’s depiction of a decapitated doll.

Benedikt Wyss, too, looks at the darker side as he directs our attention to the remnants and aftereffects of love in his exhibition “After Love” at Galerie Thoman. To this end, he invited the art project “Museum of Broken Relationships” from Zagreb to collect personal items from past relationships.

For example, the wedding dress in the window serves as a reminder of the planned wedding that never took place due to the groom’s untimely death. The iron was used to iron a wedding dress—a final memento of a former marriage. In addition, Nanna Kaiser and R. Sebastian Schachinger present a “children’s room” for the child they never had—a traumatic space.

Chuz Martinez’s exhibition at the Krinzinger Gallery is far more political, but also darker: “My Whole Being is a Dark Verse” presents very different approaches to love within very different political systems—in Iran, the U.S., and Cuba.

The curator writes that she decided to “reflect on darkness.” Maryam Tafakory’s film features film clips from Iranian cinematic history that can be interpreted as codes for love. Sofia Karim’s project “Letters of Light” is based on her correspondence with prisoners on death row in the U.S. Alexa Jarikubsjus and Ingo Niermann’s documentary follows a Cuban group as they discuss love, loneliness, and compassion.

How different, by contrast, is Andreas Reiter-Raabe’s curation of “Side by Side” for the Meyer Kainer Gallery! The Viennese artist brings together works by 23 artists, each a delight to behold in terms of artistic quality.

He emphasizes that every single work has to do with love; art, he says, can make memory, spirituality, and indeed love visible without having to explain them unequivocally. He advocates for mindfulness rather than quick understanding, for lingering rather than consuming.

After all, a work of art is not merely what it depicts. What is also crucial is the time we spend with the artwork and everything that arises while viewing it. This year, “curated by” serves as an excellent testing ground for this.

Curated by

15.9. – 17.10.2026