Opening and Catalogue Presentation: Thursday, 23 June, 7 p.m.
Introduction: Ruth Horak
Artist talk with Maria Hahnenkamp: Thursday, 7 July, 7 p.m.
Sponsored by: BKA Kunst; MA7-Kultur, Kultur Burgenland
WERKSCHAU XXI is the continuation of the annual series of exhibitions in the FOTOGALERIE WIEN which has been going on for the last twenty years. They present contemporary artists who have significantly contributed to the development of art photography and the new media in Austria. To date there has been a cross section of work by Jana Wisniewski, Manfred Willmann, VALIE EXPORT, Leo Kandl, Elfriede Mejchar, Heinz Cibulka, Renate Bertlmann, Josef Wais, Horáková + Maurer, Gottfried Bechtold, Friedl Kubelka, Branko Lenart, INTAKT – Die Pionierinnen (Renate Bertlmann, Moucle Blackout, Linda Christanell, Lotte Hendrich-Hassmann, Karin Mack, Margot Pilz, Jana Wisniewski), Inge Dick, Lisl Ponger, Hans Kupelwieser, Robert Zahornicky, Ingeborg Strobl, Michael Mauracher and PRINZGAU/ podgorschek.
For WERKSCHAU XXI we have invited the artist Maria Hahnenkamp.
Maria Hahnenkamp is regarded as one of the pivotal artists of the second generation of Austrian feminists whose main concern in her predominantly photographic works is advancing the critical examination and analysis of the status of the female body in our society. In contrast to her predecessors she does not bring her own body into performative and precarious circumstances. Instead, she analyses the social and media treatment of the female body per se or the resultant psychological effects while searching for a manifestation of this complex system of power and subjugation on a level that is simultaneously sensual and intellectual.
Parallel to this, a media immanent involvement is significant in her work – the gossamer thin layer of gelatine of the (analogue) photographs, the carrier of the information in absolute terms, is for Hahnenkamp frequently the site of manual interventions situated between acceptance and attack of this ambivalent surface. Something similar applies to cropping – time and again she elects the more forceful fragment over the informative overall view, thus launching formal resistance to voyeuristic curiosity.
Born in 1959 in Eisenstadt, Maria Hahnenkamp has developed an extensive oeuvre since the late 1980s and realised numerous exhibitions and publications. In the WERKSCHAU, which is being organised as a retrospective, around 30 works will be shown including the 195-part work of abraded photographs which has only been shown once in 1993, the original subject being a female model undertaking a beauty treatment. In addition there will be videos and a – for Hahnenkamp characteristic – slide projection work with details of women’s bodies from historical pictures and fashion magazines.
(textual support: Ruth Horak)