Laura Schawelka: Vicarious

Midissage: Wed, Sep 23, 18:00

With her film and photo installations, Laura Schawelka creates a captivating remix combining excerpts of our mediatized present. In the process of perpetually layering the virtual and the analog, she generates hybrids oscillating between moving and still image, between digital coolness and tactile sensuality, between commodity fetishism and food porn―a world so oddly satisfying one can hardly resist.

In her latest works, developed during her Q21-Artist-in-Residence in Vienna, the artist explores the “display,” analyzes the relation between interieur and exterieur (spaces) and questions passed on classifications of motifs, visual content and image carrier. The word “display” can be deduced from Latin (displicare: unfold): in Schawelka’s works shop windows and facades, but also flowers and materials evolve. After residencies in Los Angeles und Paris, she now focuses on Vienna’s retail architecture and shops: From Adolf Loos, who applied psychoanalytical knowledge in his design of the book shop front of Manz, to Hans Hollein’s retail stores for Marius Retti and Christa Metek, which are constructed as architectural images, Schawelka investigates the visual language of architecture―calculated for psychological effectiveness―and its relation to photography.

Laura Schawelka (b.1988, lives and works in Berlin) studied at the Städelschule Frankfurt in the class of Tobias Rehberger until 2013 and finished her Master’s degree in 2015 at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia near Los Angeles. In 2018, she was awarded a studio scholarship by Hessische Kulturstiftung at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. In 2019, Schawelka won the Q21 viennacontemporary Artist-in-Residence Prize in cooperation with EIKON, enabling a two-month work stay at MuseumsQuartier Wien in 2020.