2025-06-19
Although we tend to associate Christo and Jeanne-Claude with the wrapping of buildings, it was Marcin Maciejowski who did it this time.
The skyscraper housing the headquarters of the Wiener Städtische Versicherungsverein in the very centre of Vienna, known as the Ringturm, has just been adorned with his artwork reproduced on 4,000 square metres of net. The project was unveiled on Monday, 16 June, on the occasion of the seventieth anniversary of the opening of the building.
The Polish artist was invited to participate in the project even before the lockdown. The painting itself, called ‚Linking Tales’, was created in 2019, when Maciejowski collaborated on a publication with poet Marcin Świetlicki. This experience inspired the artist to depict a home library on canvas and then on the façade of Ringturm. The back of the building, meanwhile, was decorated with a quote from their conversation: ‘This book will become not only my story, but also yours’.
The Vienna Ringturm, which is the city’s first contemporary office building, has been the artistic dominant of the Ring for seventeen editions. The artists taking part in the Ringturmverhüllung (eng. ‚covering up the Ringturm’) include well-known names from Austria and other Central and Eastern European countries.