Special exhibition II 2016: HOMAGES. TO THE NATURE! – 4th May

Monika Lederbauer: Born and studies (Dr.) in Vienna – living and working after an accident (97) exclusively as a fine artist with own studio “MEE/hR” since 2002 in Mödling nearby Vienna, Salzburg and Vienna.

ML is a contemporary visual artist working in different mediums: paintings, drawings, prints – she does installations and lyric, too. Her themes are concerning nature and human being – also socially critical art statements relating to her motto: “I am feeling with my eyes, hearing with my soul and thinking with my heart. She takes the privilege / freedom expressing things she is hearing, seeing and feeling with her brushes. For her it is magic to make the immaterial visible through the use of light and colour!” ML

Art Education:
Angewandte Uni Wien 2006
Journeys to China for private studies 2006 und 2007.
International Summer Academy Salzburg (2005, 06, 07, 09)
Workshops with H.Brandl, D (08) und A.Rainer, A (09)

Michaela Hajnoczi, art historian and philologist (2006):

Using the brush, I try to express what I feel, see and hear.“
I feel with my eyes, I listen with my soul, I think with my heart. ” ML

Observers of Monika Lederbauer’s works are drawn into the border region of representational and abstract art where feelings rather than intellectual concepts serve as guidelines. In this sense she follows the impressionists and her elected sprit, Herbert Brandl.

In her „first life“, Lederbauer, a child of the fifties, used to be a committed physician. An accident in 1997 and the resulting experience of her own limitations led to a reorientation. An existing artistic talent, suppressed by the necessities of life, suddenly evolves. An autodidactic period is followed by numerous intensive workshops and internships with teachers like Svoboda, Kaiser, Müller, and the Zhou brothers. Within a short period, Lederbauer achieves impressive artistic mastery and independence.

Soon she develops the basic principles and concepts that characterize her works for the time to come: depth, light, energy, the central role of nature, a lyrical and expressive disposition, technical mastery. Repeatedly, we find the topics water (Mee/hr series), mountains (Blue series) as well as the night (Sternenhimmeltagebuch).

„The charm of colors keeps me spellbound. In the reflection of moving waters, the colours gain an enormous intensity and saturation“,says Lederbauer.  Again and again, she feels compelled to meditate with the brush in her hand about the various conditions of the elements: snow and glaciers, the ocean and the atmospheric dilution in mist and fractured light. There is an ongoing symbolism in the colour scheme of Lederbauer’s works, which are often reduced to a simple palette of blue and white hues: blue as the color of eternity, longing and wisdom, white as the sum of all colors and as the color of light itself.

In context with the contemplation of water, Lederbauer says: „There is a new composition of the picture in nearly any given moment.“ This unfinished state, this emerging and fading quality is the underlying motor in the creativity of this artist. Thus, the challenge in every white canvas is not to depict a concrete aspect of a certain landscape, but rather associations, personal feelings and emotions connected with it. This is why the onlooker gets literally drawn into the painting.

This attitude towards representational painting is true for Lederbauer’s nudes, as well. It is not the human body with his volume that is the focus of attention, but rather the lines which define it. The concept here is essentially different from her oils and acrylics:  instead of the the soul, the sentiment and tone, the form is in the limelight. The line develops its own dynamics, the outlines of simultaneously depicted shapes melt together.

Depicting the human body means to Lederbauer first of all self discipline, understanding of shapes, conscious grouping of bodies, and the description of movement. The element of time as a fourth dimension is powerfully brought into account by the rapid change of positions. Just like in photographs, the bodies are shown simultaneously from various perspectives so that the beholder feels transported in the middle of the scene. The precise ink line emphasizes – together with fine washes- the loosing and finding of the outline which is the focus of attention.

Nicole Pruckermayr:  Artist, theorist, 1975 born in Wels, Austria
lives and works in Graz since 1995. She studied biology and architecture, got her doctorate in visual culture and art antropology (2014, „Haut als Distanzerfahrung“). Than she worked as scientific assistant at the Institute of Contemporary Art/University of Technology, Graz from 2004 – 2012. Member of nap+forum::für::umläute, IMA, Schaumbad and mur.at. She is an artist who thinks and works with space, place, people, and human bodies. Video, (mediale) installations, performances and projects in public space.
She examines the connections between skin and brain, in which way we are dealing water, light, a touch, haptics  …  etc. At this time she is working with paper and kombatite and a wounded tree branch and the tree bark.
1995-1997 Study of Biology (KF-University Graz)
1997-2004 Study of Architecture (TU-Graz)
2004 Diploma “.body.space.gender.SKINS” Architecture
2004-2012 scientific assistant at the Institute of Contemporary Art, TU-Graz
since 2004 bassist of extofita
2014 Doctorate “Skin as an Experience of Distance” Visual Culture/Anthropology of Art