Stylianos Schicho

Bio

Stylianos Schicho, born in Vienna in 1977 to an Austrian father and a Greek-Cypriot mother, studied painting and graphic art at the University of Applied Arts Vienna under Professor Wolfgang Herzig, graduating with a Diploma with Distinction in 2005.

He completed his secondary school education at BORG Hegelgasse 14 in Vienna, graduating with Matura (Austrian High School Diploma) in 1996. He subsequently studied law in Vienna for several semesters.

From 1998 to 2005, he studied painting at the University of Applied Arts Vienna under Wolfgang Herzig, graduating with distinction.

International contexts and working stays include artist symposia in Kazakhstan and in the Caucasus region, a working stay in Miami (three months, invited residency format with final exhibition), participation in the group exhibition For Security Reasons at MAMA Rotterdam (2009), as well as project-related contexts in Leipzig in the environment of the Baumwollspinnerei and Pilotenküche. Further international exhibition-related collaborations are also part of the practice. In 2008, he undertook a studio residency at the Baumwollspinnerei in Leipzig as part of the Pilotenklasse programme.

His bicultural background – rooted in both Central European and Mediterranean traditions and informed by Cyprus’s history as a divided country since 1974 – resonates throughout a practice concerned with observation, belonging, and the charged space between proximity and distance. The question of who observes whom, and from which side of the threshold, is never purely formal in Schicho’s paintings. It carries history.

His works can be found in numerous renowned national and international collections, including the Albertina, the Angerlehner Collection, the ARTCollection Strabag and the Leopold Collection in Austria, the Stedeljik Museum (formerly the NOG Collection) in the Netherlands, the C-Collection in Liechtenstein and The Granary – Melva Bucksbaum and Ray Learsy Collection in the USA.

He has received multiple awards and prizes, including the STRABAG Artaward International Recognition Prize (2017), the Grand Prix of the 1st Danube Biennale (2009), the Young & Collecting Prize at Art Amsterdam / Collection of the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam (formerly NOG Collectie / SNS REAAL Foundation, 2010), and the Walter Koschatzky Kunstpreis (2nd place, mumok Vienna, 2007).

The Spectated Spectator

GALLERY jENSEITS presents works by Vienna-based artist Stylianos Schicho, whose paintings explore the fragile boundary between perception and reality.

His works often depict figures in moments of tension: intimate, fragmented, and emotionally charged.

Growing up between two cultural traditions – the introspective weight of Central European art history and the Mediterranean world with its own deeply inscribed experience of division and surveillance – Schicho’s work has consistently circled around the question of who observes whom, and from which side of the threshold.

This exhibition marks Schicho’s first presentation in the United States, introducing his work to an American audience at a moment when its subjects resonate with particular urgency. His long-standing engagement with themes of surveillance and the condition of being observed – central to his practice from the very beginning, as his first institutional solo exhibition was titled “The Observed Observer” (Kunsthalle Krems, 2006) – is gaining renewed relevance in the present.

Schicho’s practice begins with reality: sketches, memory, and lived moments. These are then dismantled and reconstructed into compositions that challenge perspective and destabilize the viewer’s position. The result is a visual field in which the observer becomes part of the observed.

His work has been exhibited internationally – across Europe, the United States, and the Middle East – and is held in major public and private collections including the Albertina, the Leopold Museum, MUSA and the STRABAG Art Collection (Vienna).

The exhibition presents a selection spanning both earlier and recent periods of Schicho’s oeuvre. While the earlier paintings are more vivid and color-rich in their execution, the newer works appear increasingly reduced and graphic: faces and specific details recede, and structure takes precedence over painterly intensity. Multi-part works that once followed a fixed arrangement can now be installed in variable, rhizomatic configurations.

A highlight of the exhibition is the large-scale, eight-part work “HOPSCOTCH 2” (2008), characteristic of Schicho’s painterly approach during that period.

Schicho’s artistic trajectory reflects a continuous process of transformation. This shift is not a departure from figuration but an intensification of its core question: how do we truly see?

In a time dominated by digital images and mediated experience, Schicho’s work reasserts the power of drawing and painting as tools of inquiry – slow, physical, and deeply human.

His work is frequently discussed in relation to contemporary society, particularly regarding technology and social behavior. Luc Caregari describes it in his article “Le peintre de la crise” as portraying a present “… eroded by a thousand gadgets …”
https://www.woxx.lu/5286/

Curatorial texts emphasize perception and observation as central elements. Hartwig Knack, curator of the Kunsthalle Krems exhibition, describes Schicho’s work as focusing on perception, surveillance, observation and self-observation, as well as the relationship between observer and observed within constructed observational spaces.

His work is sometimes compared to dystopian narratives such as George Orwell’s 1984, though it is generally understood as a broader reflection on social interaction, control, and perception.

Other noteworthy mentions of Schico’s work in the national and international media:

Forbes highlights the balance between closeness and distance, actively involving the viewer in the act of perception.
https://www.forbes.at/artikel/der-kuenstler-und-der-ewige-prozess

In Schicho’s work, the viewer’s role is thereby transformed into that of the observed: “The painting is only complete when someone stands before it.” (Exhibition context / artist statement, referenced in Forbes)
https://www.forbes.at/artikel/der-kuenstler-und-der-ewige-prozess

A recurring theme in his work is the condition of being observed. This is conveyed through perspective, gaze, and spatial construction, but also as a broader social phenomenon. As noted by (the newspaper) woxx in 2014: “Being observed runs like a red thread through his work. […] ‘Who is spying on whom?’ seems to be the artist’s question.”

STYLIANOS SCHICHO: Im Visier

Schicho’s work focuses on observation, surveillance, and self-perception, as well as the relationship between the individual and the collective. His artistic compositions often create a tension between proximity and distance, placing the viewer within the depicted situation.

While Schicho has engaged with these themes for many years, their relevance has increased in the context of digital technologies, social media, and contemporary surveillance culture, making his work particularly resonant today.

Reflection / Explanation

From Figuration to Abstraction – but not really

Stylianos Schicho never “left” figuration. Instead, he took it apart. His early works are clearly representational: faces, bodies, scenes. But even there, something is already unstable — proportions stretch, perspectives contradict, figures occupy impossible spaces.

Earlier works Vivid, color-rich Fixed compositional arrangements

Recent works Reduced, graphic language Variable, rhizomatic installation

What looks like a move toward abstraction is actually a deepening of perception. Schicho’s process is key: he observes a moment, “freezes” it, and reconstructs it according to his own perception. So, the painting is never a copy. It is a re-experienced reality.