MQ Art Box: Anna Schachinger

Anna Schachinger
Wachstumsfuge

26.05. – 27.08.
Opening: Thu 25.05., 19h

With Wachstumsfuge, Anna Schachinger takes over the upper area of the MQ Art Box with a painterly narrative that encompasses all four sides of the transparent container. On view are fish, birds, humans, and monsters whose multiple bodies, unfolded and folded into each other, come together in the light blue of sky and water: nose tips, beaks, fish mouths, and forefingers touch each other tenderly and join together precisely, establish contact with each other, and communicate at eye level. These hybrid forms are in a state of continual metamorphose while at the same time remaining autonomous and coequal. Anna Schachinger imagines mythological hybrid creatures that encounter each other far off from Mount Olympus. It is they themselves that breathe life into each other.

The vertical-format painting in the interior of the glass box corresponds with this pictorial frieze. Depicted on the canvas is an abstract human physical form whose autonomous body parts interact with each other. Legs rooted in the earth, mirrored bellies and knees, and multiple faces and their shadow profiles point to (physical) growth processes and the accompanying emotional moods, as the title Wachstumsfuge (“growth plate”) suggests.[1] Viewed from a distance, the picture in the MQ Art Box seems to grow upwards, whereby the upper design can be seen as the head section of the picture. As a form of pictorial extension, the artist links these two design elements to create a whole and invites the viewers to find their own stories in this Mount Olympus of hidden objects.

The marks that weather and time leave on the painting are regarded by the artist as an integral component of her work.

[1] The growth plate, or physis, refers to area at the end of a bone where new bone growth takes place until the end of adolescence.

Biography
Anna Schachinger (b. *1990 lives and works in Vienna) explores the inherent parameters of painting and endeavours to expand them on a material and visual level. She studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from 2010 to 2012, took part in the Maumaus School Study Programme in Lisbon in 2017, and graduated from Vienna’s Academy of Fine Arts in 2018. Her most recent solo exhibitions include Allover at Lisbon’s Lumiar Cité, and Aneinander and Hitze at the Sophie Tappeiner gallery in Vienna. She has participated in group exhibitions at Vienna’s Belvedere 21, X Museum in Beijing, and Palais de Tokyo in Paris. In 2022, she published her first artist’s book, TREFFEN.

Curated by Elisabeth Hajek