EVA SCHLEGEL

to make possible impossible space

Eva Schlegel expands the properties and limits of photography and sculpture by situating each discipline in relationship to the other. Her photographs are studies in depth. One looks into them rather than at them. They create the recessive, architectural spaces they purport to represent. Her sculptures, meanwhile, deny depth. Flat, opaque, impenetrable, their mirrored surfaces refuse to reflect either body or being. They fracture the 3-dimensional space of existence. In their presence, the viewer experiences absence. This is photography and sculpture that together make possible impossible spaces.

One finds oneself aching to enter her photographic spaces and can’t; one seeks self-reflection in her sculpture and loses any sense of self in the looking. The result is work that is poignantly, profoundly human. It expresses the limitless longing of the human person to be recognised and embraced; at the same time, it demonstrates the inconceivability of ever having that desire fulfilled.

Pregnant with longing and desire, devoid of bodies, Eva Schlegel’s work reveals solitude so complete that it makes one question one’s own existence. It awakens the terrifying feeling that in spite of all our sharing and connectedness, in spite of being surrounded by other people, we are fundamentally alone.

Through her lens, however, and in the company of her sculpture, solitude is reconfigured. It becomes a precondition, a gateway through which one must step. Eva Schlegel leads us to the other side of loneliness. It whispers with intimacy and awakens wonder. Oddly familiar, like long-forgotten childhood memories, her photographs reveal interiors to which we might return. Through its fragmentation of a single space, her sculpture manifests an endless array of possible spaces. Confronting the absence that Eva makes present, one is opened to the infinite depth and overwhelming fullness.

Eva Schlegel studied at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna from 1979 to 1985 and was a professor of art and photography at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna from 1997 to 2006. In 2011 Eva Schlegel was commissioner of the Austrian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, in 1995 she was already represented there as an artist. Eva Schlegel’s works were shown in 1988 and 1992 at the Sidney Biennale, at the 15th Bienal Internacional de Arquitectura de Buenos Aires 2015, Photobiennale MAM Moscow 2014 and 2017 as part of the Kochin Muziris Biennale, India. Her works have been shown in solo and group exhibitions, including Albertina Modern, Vienna 2021, LACMA Los Angeles 2021, Oklahoma Contemporary 2020, Ferenczy Museum, Hungary 2019, Kunstforum Wien 2019, Kunsthalle Krems 2018, Belvedere Winterpalais, Vienna 2015, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago 2013, MAK, Museum for Applied Arts, Vienna 2010 and Secession, Vienna 2005.

Since 1987, Galerie Krinzinger has shown Eva Schlegel’s work in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including curated_by Jannis Varelas, Krinzinger Schottenfeld, Vienna 2021, Portrait. Marina Abramovic, Martha Jungwirth, and Eva Schlegel. Galerie Krinzinger, Vienna 2019, Imaginary Spaces, Galerie Krinzinger, Vienna (solo) 2017, Curated by Sales in the Side Rooms / Sales in the Side Rooms curated by Harald Falckenberg, Krinzinger Projects, Vienna 2015, Characters and Figures, Galerie Krinzinger, Vienna (solo) 2015, Galerie Krinzinger, Vienna (solo) 2010. Selection of permanent interventions: Floating gates open world, Cape 10, Vienna 2021, Johannes Kepler University 2021, untitled. (veiled) Libelle, MQ, Vienna 2020, around the world..., Ringshospitalet, Copenhagen 2020, Cloudspace, Fa. Wild Völkermarkt 2019, Novartis Basel, Walkway, 2007.

Press release courtesy Galerie Krinzinger. Text: Timothy Don.