With
great pleasure we herewith invite you to Maria Brunner’s second
exhibition at Galerie Elisabeth & Klaus Thoman, presenting oil
paintings the artist has created between 2010 and 2013. The process by
which Maria Brunner’s paintings come about is an elaborate and lengthy
one. The artist faces up to the creative challenges that the history of
painting confronts her trained eye with. Extensive, apparently
monochrome fields of colour, details overlapping, various picture levels
and depths characterise her very subtle painting style. The image
structure meanwhile is determined by the collage-like meeting of
several, in most cases unrelated realities. The subjects derive from the
day-to-day world of the media, from magazines and private photographs,
that supply her with clippings, details or backgrounds, which she then
reassembles in her pictures. Some specific formulations, no doubt, are
rooted in the artist’s biography. ‘It can safely be said that a
substrate, an essence comes to the fore here, that can be influenced as
far as its surface is concerned, yet the search for the subjects, the
image search rather is a fishing in the deep.’ (Maria Brunner) Brunner
sets out tableaus in which the seamless transitions between the most
diverse photographic sequences produce an irritating complexity. Rules
of perspective are frequently ignored, the result being an unexpected,
new spatiality. The artist thus undermines expectations and handed-down
image concepts, creating a surprise effect that challenges our
perceptual habits. The observer is drawn into an irrational reality,
that at times feels mysterious, at times also threatening. The mixture
of harmless, quaint and sweet elements with others of a cryptic nature
conveys an eerie feeling and attracts us with an irresistible charm. ‘I
have given up on the idea of expressing something. Symbols don’t mean
anything, or the labelling from the outside, the subject in the image,
doesn’t correspond to the word in a sentence. Irrespective of what the
busy-body interpreters might be saying.’ (M. B.)
Maria
Brunner, born in Lienz, East Tyrol, in 1962, lives and works in Berlin.
1980-1985 University of Applied Arts, Vienna. Since 1987, contributions
to international exhibitions, e.g. 2010 Tiroler Landesmuseum
Ferdinandeum; 2005 BAWAG Foundation, Vienna; 2004 Lombard-Freid Fine
Arts, New York, Maximilianmuseum Augsburg, Cook Fine Art, New York; 2003
Kjubh Kunstverein, Cologne; 1997 David Zwirner Gallery, New York,
Akademie der Künste, Berlin, August Sander Archiv, Cologne, Kunstverein
Hamburg; and solo exhibitions, most recently: 2012 Der Himmel hatte
Fieber, Kunstverein Offenburg-Mittelbaden (with Florin Kompatscher);
2011 Galerie Elisabeth & Klaus Thoman, Innsbruck; 2010 I’m glad I’m
not me, Kunst Forum Rottweil; 2009 Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne;
2008 Auf den Knien meines Herzens, Kunstverein Heilbronn; 1999 Galerie
im Taxispalais, Innsbruck.
