In his work, Austrian artist and designer Lukas Gschwandtner explores proximity, the social life of objects, and their use. A prime example of this was his solo exhibition Speed Dating, which was shown at the Radio Athènes art center in Athens.
Gschwandtner’s practice moves between object, space, and body. He understands furniture as functional everyday objects, as carriers of social, cultural, and symbolic meanings. In this sense, he describes his work as an examination of the social dimension of objects and their proximity to the human body. On the website of Radio Athènes, he formulates this approach as follows:
»Furniture is a necessity of human life but beyond its functionality, furniture design also reflects the social life of objects and has symbolic capacities.«
Trained in traditional leather processing and Spatial Design, Gschwandtner now lives and works in Vienna. His work results from both craftsmanship and art and design historical references. Materials such as canvas, leather, metal, and historical textiles, including fragments of 18th-century tapestries, fringes, and horsehair, form the basis of his formal language. Canvas, in particular, functions in his work as a flexible medium that is folded, cut, or laid out on the floor, while at the same time carrying aesthetic, historical, and narrative levels.
In the recently shown exhibition, Gschwandtner drew on Aristophanes’ speech in Plato’s Symposium. The idea of the once spherical people, who were separated by Zeus and have since been searching for their other half, served as a conceptual frame of reference for questions of duality, complementarity, and relationship. New works such as museum benches, lamps, display cases, his Pillow Chairs, and textile objects, as well as their prototypes, were related to each other in a home-like structure. Gschwandtner describes this approach as an attempt to give his works the opportunity to find a counterpart—between first draft and final object, between personal use and public presentation.
In a statement, he explains how the theme of the exhibition took shape:
»Aristophanes’ idea of the spherical people, who, after being cut apart by Zeus, spend their lives searching for their other half—has followed me for a while. Somehow, it felt natural to apply this theory to many situations; there always seem to be two sides, two components, in my work: sometimes a historical one, sometimes a bodiless observation—and especially between the first attempt at a piece and its final version.
So I began thinking about giving my pieces the chance to find their other half, in Athens. Living in Vienna with the first iterations of each work helped me understand their domestic relevance more. After the final versions had been shown outside my personal space, the originals started to form an emotional dialogue with me, almost a kind of companionship. They became new protagonists in my life and my rooms.
One chair, for example, became my nightstand out of necessity. It held my water glass and books and, most importantly, greeted me every morning.
One light was never meant to be shown elsewhere; I made it for my partner’s birthday. Strangely, various versions of it found their way into exhibitions and collectors’ homes.
The gathered pieces will occupy a Greek apartment; each room will host a couple, two reunited halves—almost as if I were giving them privacy in each room to discuss their time apart. Their own symposium, or even speed dating: I let them converse with their opposite to see if it’s a match. Otherwise, we rotate.
Strange to think that I would be Zeus in this scenario. And what would my Mount Olympus be? Austrian hills? My apartment on the fourth floor?
And at the opening I turn into a speed dating moderator?
Returning to Aristophanes and his companions discussing Eros and love, it’s interesting to consider the actual social and domestic setting of the Symposium. While each guest presents their thesis on love, they are also sharing a space—drinking, eating, listening to one another.
This brings me to imagine Phaedrus, Pausanias, Eryximachus, Aristophanes, Agathon, Socrates, and Alcibiades inhabiting the apartment—the exhibition space—and leaving behind glasses, fragments, and traces of an evening of conversation.
Laid on the floor of Radio Athènes at Tositsa: canvases, originally from my 30th birthday party in my Vienna atelier—my own kind of symposium.«
—Lukas Gschwandtner, Vienna, November 2025
Gschwandtner’s work shows how closely function, social attribution, and emotional attachment are interwoven and interact. In the context of Radio Athènes, an independent platform for contemporary visual culture at the interface of art, design, and theory that has existed since 2014, this examination recently found a concise spatial implementation. [Ed.]
