flower power

Ausstellungsdauer:    6. Juni  -  13. Juli 2019
Eröffnungsrede: Mag.^a Maria Christine Holter

Today we are confronted with a new relationship to nature. Species loss, climate change and artificial biotopes are some of the catchwords that characterize the changed conditions of nature on the one hand.
On the other hand, a newly awakened longing for nature can be detected deep into our everyday lives.

In the exhibition of Gallery Ulrike Hrobsky "Flowerpower" artists create works in various materials and media that make use of traditional still-life metaphors and consistently contain a memento mori (although no moral message), perhaps not always recognizable at first glance, but clearly present.

Donald Baechler's formally reduced depiction does not intend to evoke "the impression of similarity". His sometimes childishly seeming pictures have their roots in popular, American
traditions and captivate with their simplicity. (note nature morte)

Alexandra Deutsch's handmade paper objects, richly coloured and rich in textures and ideas of form, are already found as a counterpoint to the delicate seed assemblages of A. Flaig and the transparent drawings of M.Tscherni's in the second room.

Two artists as different as Michaela Bruckmüller and Angela Flaig deal with time, transience and fragility.

Michaela Bruckmüller, born in Wels and living in Vienna, shows us once again a true feast for the eyes of her photographic art, which in recent years has brought the motif of flowers and plants to the fore. The opulent floral motifs always have a deeper meaning for her, they refer - like Dutch flower still lifes - to a memento mori, to the coming and going, which in their death, in their last rebellion still unfold their incredible power and beauty, perform a Danse Macabre.

Angela M. Flaig is working with natural materials. She starts from a maximum closeness to nature, which she seeks by consciously including flying seeds and flowers.

The Viennese artist Martina Tscherni and Sylvia Vorwagner, who lives in Altmünster in Upper Austria, pose questions of artistic construction in their quite differently formulated contributions to "Flower Power".

In her detailed, large-format drawings, which are actually mixed techniques of graphite and coloured pencil drawing with collaged sprinkles, Martina Tscherni deals with forms that take shape on paper in a more or less conscious state. Tscherni uses old scientific representations as inspiration in her realisation of these drawings, in which she connects the sensitive self with the plant and does not stop there even before sexuality.

Sylvia Vorwagner shows graphically dominated gouaches of serially placed open white flowers. The analogy of fully blossomed flowers with the female sex is not an invention of the two, nor is that of precarious flower beauty with death in Bruckmüller's work.

Maria Temnitschka writes about the current exhibition herself:
"Go there at all costs! Firstly because of my outstanding colleagues and secondly because I don't usually paint flowers. But exceptions confirm the rule. And: "Flowers can also be evil!"

Tilmann Zahn's red lichen, artfully torn from handmade paper, brings the title of the exhibition right to the point: Flower Power!
In his unique works on paper, in which handmade paper is dipped in a colored oil bath before  further processing, Zahn deals primarily with the burnt-out periphery of our cities, as a sprouting plant that captivates through its aesthetics, but at the same time appears as a warning.

Excerpts from the opening speech © Maria Christine Holter.