EDUCATION
Architecture, Technical University
Vienna, Austria
JURY
Erika Billeter
Gunter Damisch
Gregor Eichinger
Peter Noever
Achille Bonito Oliva
FINAL PROJECT
Renowned for his works which spark a short circuit between the art world and the economic market, Plamen Dejanov (Bulgaria-Austria, 1970) studied at the Academy of Applied Arts in Sofia and the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. From 1994 to 2000 he established a long partnership in both life and work with Swetlana Heger, creating an artistic company which participated in numerous collective exhibitions, including the 2nd Berlin Biennial. Their most notable project together was Quite Normal Luxury, 1999, a piece that consisted largely of a contract with BMW that traded brand exposure for the artists’ use of a new Z3 Roadster.
Since 2001, Plamen has individually continued to explore the themes previously tackled in collaboration with Heger, focusing on the relationship between culture and economy, art and market and, by extension, reaching a fusion of art and life. His strategy is much closer to the production dynamics of large multinationals than to the working process of an artist. He analyses the mechanisms of corporations–from production to consumption–in order to center his work on communication. This reflection on the close ties between art and the economy extends to his personal life, with a global rebranding of his image through a communication campaign, leading to a modification of his surname itself, from Dejanov to Dejanoff.
Flora Neuwirth (aka Flora N. Galowitz, clubblumen, fnsystems, ...) was born 1971 in Graz, lives and works in Vienna.
Her interdisciplinary work moves between the visual and applied arts, as well as between the literary, the cinematic, and the social. Her works are consequently displayed in a variety of different locations: from classic exhibition spaces to self-initiated social collective spaces, cinemas, books, and even everyday living spaces. The perception and presentation pragmatics of the various media shift in their weighting in the respective spaces. As part of the whole, the multifaceted aspects always remain—at least as traces of a complex artistic practice. (Stefanie Reisinger, Belvedere 21, Vienna 2024)
She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and the UdK Berlin; scholarship residencies at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles and at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris. Exhibitions include: Künstlerhaus - Halle für Kunst und Medien, Graz; Belvedere 21, Vienna; Ve.Sch-Kunstverein, Vienna; Kunstverein Wolfsburg; Galerie der Stadt Schwaz; Salzburger Kunstverein; Kunstverein Ludwigsburg; Neue Galerie/Studio am Landesmuseum Joanneum, Graz. Since 2008 she has been running the project "clubblumen – space for contemporary art, music, food, drink, communication, ..."
