Talks on Painting

by Heike-Karin Föll, Iulia Nistor, Vera Palme

The painting department invites you to our upcoming Talks on Painting featuring artists Heike-Karin Föll, Iulia Nistor and Vera Palme. The three painters will discuss their work with a focus on the individual studio practice.
How to paint now?

In times of daily horrible news and the rise of fascism and authoritarianism - how does it influence your studio time? Or maybe it doesn’t? What kind of answers or suggestions may an artistic practice offer us today? What can a studio practice in particular offer as a space for exploring and negotiating external realities, internal images, the materiality and the historical conditioning of painting? How exactly do (and what kind of) images emerge in the studio under these conditions, formally, materially, and in terms of content? We are interested in the processes of artistic production where practice is a place of critical negotiation and possible dialogue between these parameters, realities, feelings, within the repeated act of working, for example, on a canvas.

For our Talks on Painting, we are also asking about the edges of painting and spaces of ambivalence — symbolically and formally. Where does painting lead us when we allow edgy feelings and foggy states of mind? What does the space in between signify when focus is wandering? How do ambiguities and gaps in color and shape address their audience and position viewers?

We do not expect clear answers, but rather a productive discussion with painters who deal with these interstices in their work in exciting ways.

Heike-Karin Föll is a Berlin-based artist. She works with the materiality and mechanics of painting and language, treating textuality as equally a vehicle of content, a visual motif and a material form. Heike-Karin Föll’s work include paintings, books, prints and texts, investigating the dissemination and valuation of visual art focusing on new media dispersion methods. Her work is represented by Oskar Weiss Gallery, Zürich and Emanuela Campoli, Paris/ Milano.

Iulia Nistor is a philosopher and visual artist working in the philosophy of mind. Central questions include intentionality, perception, doubt, and change of mind. The practice spans text, spatial intervention, and painting. Nistor studied philosophy and completed her doctorate at the University of Regensburg, Germany, received a Meisterschüler from the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main, and participated in the Whitney Independent Study Program, New York. Forthcoming books are properties without objects (2026) and Intentionality and the Paradox of Fiction (2026).

Vera Palme (*1983) is an artist based in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. She has recently had solo exhibitions at Schleuse, Wien (2026); Galerie Buchholz, New York (2025) and Kunsthalle Winterthur, Winterthur (2025), as well as the two person show Potential d’en face together with Laura Langer at Etablissement d’en face, Brussels (2025). Recent group exhibitions include Jetzt und Nie at Halle für Kunst Lüneburg (2024) and Hoi Köln at Kölnischer Kunstverein (2024).

Talks on Painting is organized by Nadja Abt and Henning Bohl.

The event is held in conjunction with the opening of Spring: Landscape at Showroom Angewandte at Musemsquartier. The exhibition is conceived by students of the painting department of Henning Bohl, in collaboration with Florian Pfaffenberger.

Spring: Landscape
May 28 – October 15

Still on view:
Winter: Still Live
January 15 – May 15

MQ Showroom
Museums Quartier Wien
Museumsplatz 1
1070 Wien