Tender Matters - Ö1 Talent Scholarship for Visual Arts 2025

MQ Ovalhalle | Free entry
10.12. – 17.12.
Mon – Fri, 14 – 19h, Sat & Sun, 11 – 19h

Award ceremony & opening with performance by Antuum: 09.12., 18.30h → MORE INFO

With works by Jana Ehls, Clemens Gächter, Ruth Größwang, Luise Lutz & Michel Strümpf, Anton Tkachuk

Together with Austrian art universities, Ö1 once again sought out talented young artists. The Ö1 Talent Scholarship for Fine Arts, worth €10,000, is provided by Wiener Städtische Versicherungsverein.

The works of the nominated artists present a variety of approaches that search for traces in and with materials in a sensual and poetic way. The familiar appears in new contexts and enters into a dialogue with the future.

exhibition folder

The word ‘talent’ is back in vogue. Many institutions and organisations have a ‘talent lab’, and even outside the arts and culture, talent and its promotion are very much in vogue in all sectors. Ö1 focused on young talent 20 years ago: the Ö1 Talent Exchange was created in 2004 as a project for the sustainable promotion of young artists. In long-standing cooperation with Austrian art universities, Ö1 regularly presents outstanding talents from the fields of visual arts and music, offering them an important platform on the radio, online and on social media.

In 2025, the Ö1 Talent Scholarship for visual arts was announced as part of the Talentebörse with the support of Wiener Städtische Versicherungsverein and in cooperation with the MuseumsQuartier Wien. Endowed with 10,000 euros, it is intended to enable young art students to devote themselves exclusively to their artistic work for one year. Students enrolled at one of the five art universities in Austria were eligible to apply: Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, University of Applied Arts Vienna, University of Art and Design Linz, University of Art and Design Graz and Mozarteum University Salzburg.

The exhibition Tender Matters, curated by Elisabeth Hajek and Astrid Peterle at the Ovalhalle in MuseumsQuartier Wien, features artists nominated by a jury of experts as well as one artist chosen by the Ö1 audience in an online vote. The latter will also receive the opportunity to participate in the Parallel Vienna 2026 art fair free of charge. The works submitted in 2025 reveal a broad spectrum of artistic strategies, all of which deal with material and memory in different ways. Despite their diversity, recurring themes run through the positions: collecting and preserving, the transformation of everyday objects, dialogue with language, and the examination of ecology and time. The word ‘talent’ has its origins in a unit of measurement and a currency of the same name. Only later did it become an expression for human ability. The word ‘exchange’ also has something to do with the market or trade. ‘Talentebörse’ could therefore be understood in economic or purely monetary terms. Ö1 wants to see it differently: by questioning and highlighting injustices, art has a high social and emancipatory value that should be promoted.

Hans Groiss, Project Manager, Ö1 Talentebörse

Image: Luise Lutz & Michel Strümpf, — ich würde getragen worden sein —, 2025. Sandstone, pear branch, text