KAREN HOLLÄNDER | ALOIS MOSBACHER

ALOIS MOSBACHER

Born in 1954 in Strallegg, Austria

1973–1978 Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna

2014 Austrian Art Prize for Fine Arts

2012 Honorary Award for Fine Arts, Culture Prize of the Province of Lower Austria

Plant parts, a pair of old gloves, a cactus. The elements with which Alois Mosbacher has been composing his paintings for years are everyday objects and appear like flotsam on the shore of our civilization. Mosbacher ties his artifacts together into symmetrical objects and positions them centrally on canvases of equal size.

And suddenly there are faces looking out from the pictures. The viewer makes eye contact with clay shards, spider torsos, and poppy blossoms—is she standing in front of a mirror and recognizing herself? Or are these actually new beings that Mosbacher has created?

In the blink of an eye, the grotesque faces vanish and reassemble themselves completely anew in the next picture. The images pulsate in constant transformation; no process is ever complete, no fragment seems to linger in its place for long.

Alois Mosbacher’s pictures become snapshots of the fleeting identity of human beings.

KAREN HOLLÄNDER

Born in 1964 in Tübingen, Germany

Lives and works in Vienna

1983/84 Study visit to Paris, Académie Peninghen

1984-89 Studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, diploma

Karen Holländer finds her motifs everywhere, but mainly in the city where she lives. “She is a very sensitive observer of her environment, social conditions, and the nuances of everyday life. She skillfully transfers her own emotions and perceptions into a general statement. In her memorable, reduced pictorial compositions, she refrains from narrative excesses. (Quote: Silvie Aigner, Parnass 04/2024)

Karen Holländer: “Among other things, my focus is on the depiction of everyday objects that can also be seen as metaphors for certain circumstances or sensitivities of human existence.”