In the Studio James Lewis, Vienna

James Lewis works with the things that remain when certainty disappears — data, photographs, scent, fragments of memory. Born in London, based in Vienna, he builds installations that ask how we construct knowledge, turning a statistic into a sculpture, a memory into a scent.

In the Studio Cecilia Vicuña, New York

Cecilia Vicuña’s practice moves fluidly between poetry, sculpture, textile, and performance, always returning to what she calls arte precario: an art built from debris, unspun wool, feathers, and stone that she has been making since 1966. Rooted in Indigenous Andean knowledge systems, and above all in the khipu—the knotted cord long dismissed as a mere accounting device—her work reframes precariousness and fragility as forms of consciousness rather than loss.

Person with long wavy hair sits on a stool in a gallery, looking at the camera, wearing a navy jacket; left wall covered in blue Life posters.

In the Studio Robin Kid, Rambouillet, France

Robin Kid works with images that feel less made than encountered. Cowboys, cops, fragments of cartoon Americana: images that existed long before he picked them up, suspended somewhere between memory and mass culture. Raised in the south of the Netherlands by his grandparents, in a former mining neighbourhood bordering an American army base, he grew up with the idea of the U.S. glowing faintly from the other side of the fence.

Adult person in a navy suit sits at a table, hands clasped, speaking, in a room with built-in white bookshelves, a black fireplace, and red chairs

Collector Stories Robert Punkenhofer, Barcelona/Vienna

For more than 20 years, Robert Punkenhofer has been involved in international corporate and art management. His agency Art & Idea considers itself a nexus between art, architecture, design, and economics. He has curated more than 100 exhibitions, among them the annual Vienna Art Week. He has served as Trade Commissioner for the Austrian Foreign Trade Organisation in Mexico City, New York, and Berlin, a role that he currently holds in Barcelona. We spoke with the unusual collector about art, his ability to repeatedly create things from nothing, and about his passion for Vienna’s brilliant k. and k. period.

Culture Briefing

Where to meet art, culture and creativity

Nordic Notes

Collectors Agenda's view on the Nordic art scene

Artist in dark sweater gestures toward a lime-green hooded sculpture; another lime-green figure on a wooden pedestal in a bright studio.

Kim Simonsson, Fiskars
With references to fairytale characters, manga films and computer games, Kim Simonsson’ sculptures are very distinctive. His dreamy figures are a touch menacing, yet simultaneously fragile and frail. They all share an appearance that is solitary and a little sad, tinged with a sense of uncertainty or uneasiness that is stirred among the viewer. Who are they, and where are they going?
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