BEENDET: FOKUS: Ornament — Vienna Design Week

This year, the new curated group exhibition format FOKUS features objects that explore what ornaments can be. An expansive scenography by Easy-Center frames the works selected by guest curator Liv Vaisberg.

Cost per selected piece: 300 euros
Deadline: 31.5.2022

FOKUS creates a new opportunity for participation, especially for young designers from abroad, which is comparatively inexpensive and logistically less complex than a conventional festival participation (such as at PLATFORM). FOKUS is a curated group exhibition shown in the main festival venue of VIENNA DESIGN WEEK. As one of the festival’s core formats it receives particular attention from PR and the audience.

To apply send images as well as dimensions of one object, a brief text covering its concept including the relevance for the topic and a CV to fokus@viennadesignweek.at

Design is the creation of objects to be produced as an industrial series. That’s not all there is to it, though! In their work, many designers do not necessarily strive to scale their ideas, but dedicate themselves to the expression of a single object. With the tools of design – but also those of craft and art – they search for the extraordinary, the poetic, for impressions that lie beyond usual product cycles.

In order to provide a playing field for this concentration on outstanding objects, VIENNA DESIGN WEEK is launching the group exhibition format FOKUS. From international as well as local submissions on an annually changing theme, a guest curator selects contributions that are then presented together at the Festival Headquarters. An important element of this approach is a specially commissioned spatial staging of the exhibits, which brings them together and makes them work as an exhibition.

For the first edition of FOKUS VIENNA DESIGN WEEK was able to win Liv Vaisberg, renowned art and design expert based in Rotterdam and Brussels, as guest curator. The design of the scenography will come from the young Viennese duo Easy-Center. The group exhibition „FOKUS: Ornament“ aims to bring together contemporary design pieces that explore which parts ornaments play in design and beyond that in our lives. Building on the history and looking towards the future, the show wants to demonstrate how design can utilise ornaments as ways of joyous, critical, functional – meaningful! – expression.

Special programme and networking opportunities for FOKUS designers in attendance.

All details for the OPEN CALL you find here CLICK