The 100th exhibition featuring Anita Witek and Tina Lechner in Vienna marks a special milestone in the engagement with contemporary art.
The preview of the anniversary exhibition at foryouandyourcustomers took place on 10 June, attended by members of the PARNASS Artlife Club and around 80 guests from Vienna's cultural scene. The official opening on 12 June brought together 150 invited employees from the company's 15 locations.
COMMON GROUND: Anita Witek and Tina Lechner
The jubilee exhibition at foryouandyourcustomers presents works by Anita Witek and Tina Lechner, two artists who both regard photography as their home base. Images as carriers of memory and the history of art are enduring points of reference in their practices. While Anita Witek works through processes of deconstruction—collecting, dismantling, and reassembling found imagery, often in site-specific installations that extend into textile objects—Tina Lechner develops her motifs like a sculptor. She creates elaborate sculptural constructions as models for her photographs, while consistently preserving the anonymity of her protagonist.
In 2024, the two artists collaborated on a new body of work in which Anita Witek appeared before Tina Lechner's camera wearing Witek's own textile objects. The exhibition offers fresh perspectives on both artists' oeuvres, highlighting the synergies of artistic collaboration and demonstrating the spatial dimensions photography can inhabit.
Vienna was deliberately chosen as the venue for this anniversary exhibition. It was here that foryouandyourcustomers first established its commitment to contemporary art—an engagement that has long been an integral part of the company's culture. What began around 15 years ago through the initiative of artist and curator Sali Ölhafen has since evolved into a Europe-wide network spanning 15 offices and 100 exhibition projects across the company.
Since 2023, the art programme has been directed by Nadine Bajek, who has continued and further developed the programme established by Sali Ölhafen. During the opening, both were honoured in recognition of their curatorial work on the occasion of the 100th exhibition.
Company founder Jonathan Möller also expressed his sincere thanks to curator Dr Lisa Ortner-Kreil for the longstanding collaboration, as well as to the participating artists. For several years, Tina Lechner has been creating commissioned editions for the company, presented as anniversary gifts to employees celebrating five years with the organisation. These works form part of an ongoing series of artistic commissions regularly initiated and supported by foryouandyourcustomers.
In her opening address, curator Dr Lisa Ortner-Kreil described the 100th exhibition as a significant milestone in the company's longstanding commitment to the arts. She noted that Anita Witek and Tina Lechner were intentionally selected as two of Austria's leading contemporary photographers, each expanding the possibilities of the photographic medium in distinct ways.
The exhibition features several premieres, including new collage works and a large-scale textile installation by Anita Witek, Tina Lechner's sculptural works shown publicly for the first time, and the collaborative series SISTERS IN CRIME. COMMON GROUND is conceived as a dialogue on space, the body, perception, and image-making, revealing the compelling intersections between two independent artistic practices.
Biographies
Anita Witek (b. 1971) is one of Austria's leading internationally recognised artists working in the field of conceptual photography. She studied painting at the University of Applied Arts Vienna before completing an MA in Photography at the Royal College of Art in London. Her work investigates the mechanisms of image production, memory, and perception by transforming photographic archives, found images, and collage into complex visual constructions.
Her work has been presented in numerous international solo and group exhibitions, including at Kunst Haus Wien, Kunsthalle Graz, Camera Austria, Fotomuseum Winterthur, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, as well as in New York, London, Brussels, Istanbul, and Vancouver. In 2015, she received the Austrian State Prize for Photography. Anita Witek lives and works in Vienna.
Tina Lechner (b. 1981) lives and works in Vienna. She studied art and photography at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. The female body serves as the conceptual point of departure for her work. Through analogue photography and meticulously constructed sculptural objects, Lechner explores the relationship between body, construction, and identity. Her works exist in the tension between attraction and unease, questioning what constitutes human identity. Her works are held in the collections of the Albertina, Belvedere 21, the Museum der Moderne Salzburg, and Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz, among others. She has exhibited extensively in Austria and internationally, including at C/O Berlin, the Cité de l'Image (Clervaux), the Beijing International Art Biennale at the National Art Museum of China, Kunsthalle Wien, Belvedere 21, Weltmuseum Wien, and Galerie Hubert Winter.
