What defines trash as trash? For the third edition of the group exhibition format FOKUS, the guest curators Anton Rahlwes and Nina Sieverding have sought out outstanding design objects that explore the aesthetic concept of trash, use their composition or design to address issues like recycling and the circular economy, or experiment with biodegradable materials. As a result, trash describes a spectrum that moves between abstract style and concrete materiality. Trash can be obvious, vulgar, and, ironic, but also subtle, intellectual, and sophisticated. Something that, at first glance, looks like garbage can, at second glance, be a material that is merely waiting to be processed in a new way. In other words: Which treasures and opportunities are lying around in our trash – or in that, which we call trash? 

In order to offer an arena for sculptural, experimental, and conceptual approaches to the design of objects, the VIENNA DESIGN WEEK launched the group exhibition format FOKUS in 2022: Every year, guest curators make selections from the local and international responses to a different subject and present these collectively in the Festival Headquarters. A key element of this process is the specially commissioned spatial presentation, which brings together the objects and enables them to fully express themselves. This year’s scenography is the work of the young Viennese design collective soju.studio.

With works by: bruno baietto, Christiane Deibel, Christoph Wimmer-Ruelland, Chryssa Kotoula, Das Rezyklat, Fatma Cankaya, Hannah Kuhlmann, Hannah Mackaness, Heiko Bauer with Lena Rimmel and Ben Matteo Kellner, Julia Bonich, Julian Paula, Laura Mrkša, lebedrakshuka, Louis Funke, Ludwig Albert, Luis Niederbuchner, Lia Raquel Marques, Oliver Telegdy, Peter Schackl, sa:k design studio, studio blass & orange, studiorasley, Thilo Reich, Thomas Waidhofer, Tim Teven and Flora Lechner, VAVA Objects, and Virginia Jakim