Alexandra Baumgartner
Alexandra Baumgartner’s works start out with found objects and photographs which are altered by means of various interventions and re-contextualizations. For The Unknown, the form of a 1970s lamp was adapted and enlarged on a scale of 1:10, filling the space. Bereft of its function, the form becomes an empty husk of itself, an unknown object. Enlarging proportions creates a surreal, oppressive situation; withdrawing into one’s own home as a supposed place of security becomes a trap, as warping and shadows distort reality and fiction.
Alexandra Baumgartner
Alexandra Baumgartner
Alexandra Baumgartner
Alexandra Baumgartner
Alexandra Baumgartner
Alexandra Baumgartner’s works are mostly based on found photographs as well as furniture and everyday objects.
Through minimal interventions, juxtapositions and spatial arrangements, she places her mostly anonymous source material in new contexts. Her work extends across different media (collage, installation, painting and object art) and to downright conceptual approaches.
Historical portraits are regularly the subject of her interventions. Images get materially cut or sewn, painted over, and sometimes a new layer of “behind” is opened by burning parts of the image. It is often subliminal tones that Baumgartner is looking for: premonitions, absurd and disturbing moments, a disquieting atmosphere.
The material is examined autopsy-like. Baumgartner’s interest is not in the original context of the source material, but rather in finding a new content, a view of hidden abysses. It is an analysis and elaboration of the fragile relationships between deeply personal feelings and external constraints, between nature, which determines man, who again tries to control them, but remains basically nevertheless inferior.
Alexandra Baumgartner / The 2017 fellowship award winner presents new work.
December 15, 2018 – January 27, 2019 / Salzburger Kunstverein
Visit the exhibition page >
