Anna-Sophie Berger. Places to fight and to make up

Anna-Sophie Berger (born 1989 in Vienna) is the first winner of the Kapsch Contemporary Art Prize, established in 2016 by Kapsch AG and mumok to promote young artists who live and work mainly in Austria. The prize comes with 5,000 euro and a solo exhibition at mumok, including a publication. In addition a work by the prizewinning artist is purchased by the Kapsch Group for the mumok collection.

The exhibition Places to fight and to make up explores basic issues relating to communication. The works shown focus on the influence of modern communication media on our society’s ability to enter into dialogue and discourse, on interaction between people and objects, and our use of objects and their preservation. Berger sees many different meanings in objects—what she calls capacities—that emerge through mutual influence between the object and its environment.

Today’s permanent flows of information seem to be infinite. We often process information associatively and intuitively. To what extent do digital means of communication influence our dialogue in the real world? Do we become more impatient, less focused, or even less interested?

In conjunction with her exhibition Places to fight and to make up, Anne-Sophie Berger is making an artist’s book entitled Manual - Handbook -, to be seen as a component and an extension of the museum installation. With texts by Anna-Sophie Berger, Marianne Dobner, and Tess Edmonson.

Curated by Marianne Dobner

The artist
Anna-Sophie Berger studied fashion design and transmedia art at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. She has participated in numerous group exhibitions and has presented her first solo shows, including at JTT and Ludlow 38 in New York, the White Flag Projects Library in St. Louis, and at the 21er Haus and at Mauve in Vienna. Up to May 17, she exhibited at KUB Billboards at Kunsthaus Bregenz. Since 2015 she has been teaching at the University of Applied Arts Vienna in the Department of Art and Knowledge Transfer.

The Kapsch Contemporary Art Prize 2016
Ten art experts invited seventeen artists to apply for the Kapsch Contemporary Art Prize. An international jury consisting of mumok director Karola Kraus, Georg Kapsch, CEO of the Kapsch Group, Eva Birkenstock, director of the Kunstverein Düsseldorf, Yilmaz Dziewior, director of Museum Ludwig, and Stephanie Weber, curator for contemporary art at the Lenbachhaus Munich, selected the artist Anna-Sophie Berger as the first prizewinner of this new art prize.