Eva Schlegel at Galerie Krinzinger

June 8–August 27, 2022

to create an improbable space. Eva Schlegel expands the characteristics and boundaries of sculpture and photography in her show liminal spaces by relating each art form to the other. Her photographs are in-depth examinations of space. Instead of looking at them, one stares into them. They construct the architecturally retracted spaces that they symbolize. In contrast, her sculptures downplay depth. Their mirror surfaces are flat, opaque, and impenetrable and won’t reflect either body or being. The three-dimensional space of existence is broken by them. The viewer feels absence in their presence. This is a combination of sculpture and photography that creates previously impassable spaces.

One feels the urge to enter her photographic realms but is unable to do so; one looks to her sculptures for self-reflection but loses all sense of self in the process. The end effect is art that is profoundly and poignantly human. It depicts the impossibility of ever having that need satisfied while also expressing the boundless hunger of the human person to be recognized and welcomed.

But through her eyes and with the help of her art, isolation is transformed. It turns into a requirement, a threshold that must be crossed. Eva Schlegel guides us past loneliness and toward connection. It speaks softly, arousing curiosity. Her images depict interiors that seem strangely familiar, like long-forgotten childhood recollections, and to which we might go back. Her sculpture creates an infinite number of potential spaces through the fragmentation of a single space. One is exposed to the limitless depth and overwhelming completeness of being while confronting the absence that Eva makes present (Timothy Don).

From 1997 through 2006, Eva Schlegel taught photography and painting at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. Eva Schlegel served as the Austrian commissioner at the Venice Biennale in 2011; she had previously been an artist in the Austrian Pavilion in 1995.

Eva Schlegel’s works is shown internationally, her work has been presented at the Sidney Biennale (1988 and 1992), at Aperto, Venice Biennale (1990) the 15th Bienal Internacional de Arquitectura de Buenos Aires (2015), Photobiennale MAM Moscow (2014) and at the Kochin Muziris Biennale (2017), India. Her works can be found at renowned collections such as Albertina, Vienna, Belvedere, Vienna, Museum of Modern Art, Vienna, LACMA, Los Angeles, Brooklyn Museum, NY, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago and has been shown in solo and group exhibitions, including Albertina Modern, Vienna 2021, LACMA Los Angeles 2021, Oklahoma Contemporary 2020, Ferenczy Museum, Hungary 2019, Kunstforum Vienna 2019, Kunsthalle Krems 2018, Belvedere Winterpalais, Vienna 2015, MAK, Museum for Applied Arts, Vienna 2010 and Secession, Vienna 2005.

She has realized many big site specific interventions, e.g. Rigshospitalet, Copenhagen, MQ Libelle, Vienna, Novartis Campus, Basel and will be represented with two permanent architectural interventions in the presently renovated Austrian parliament (opening autumn 2022).