20 Years of Kulturdrogerie
The Viennese artist-run space Kulturdrogerie introduces itself and presents the catalog Kulturdrogerie, published in 2025—as part of the Academy Library’s event series Wer A… sagt.
Markus Hiesleitner and Klara Paterok present the Kulturdrogerie catalog, which was published in December 2025 to mark the organization’s 20th anniversary. The two artists offer insights into the day-to-day operations of an artist-run space and discuss past, current, and future projects at the Kulturdrogerie [Culture Drugstore].
Kulturdrogerie was founded in 2005 by Markus Hiesleitner and Franz Tišek—both students at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna at the time—in Vienna’s Währing district, in a former drugstore, with the aim of artistically exploring themes of ecology, activism, utopias, and social interaction. Since then, the artist-run space has been offering selected artists temporary studio spaces for the production of new works, as well as exhibition and presentation spaces.
In 2019, Kulturdrogerie launched a branch in St. Florian (Upper Austria) called flora pondtemporary. Over the summer months, the concept of “living social sculpture” is being extended from Vienna to the countryside, where artists are creating permanent works and transforming the monastery ponds into an exhibition space for young contemporary art. The flora pondtemporary project focuses on the question of how contemporary art can help bridge the contrasts between city and countryside, space and urban density, and tradition and trends.
Markus Hiesleitner is a visual artist and the founder of Kulturdrogerie. After completing his agricultural training at the Francisco Josephinum in Wieselburg, Hiesleitner studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna with Monica Bonvicini in the Department of Performance Art and Sculpture. In 2023, he received the Lower Austria State Award for Visual Arts.
www.hiesleitner.com
Klara Paterok is a visual artist and a long-time team member at Kulturdrogerie. Paterok studied sculpture at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf [Academy of Fine Arts]. She is a co-founder of the Düsseldorf-based women artists’ collective Mother Of Pearl, which created the pavilion of the same name at the Stiftsteichen in St. Florian in 2021.
www.klarapaterok.de
motherofpearl-collective.com
Markus Hiesleitner, Klara Paterok, Franz Tišek (ed.)
With contributions by Radka Denemarková, Lenka Kukurová, Omar Mirza, Ursula Maria Probst, Francis Ruyter
Kulturdrogerie
240 pages, 200 color illustrations, German/English, ISBN: 978-3-99153-226-2
Vienna: Verlag für moderne Kunst, 2025
www.vfmk.org/products/kulturdrogerie