FRIEDL KUBELKA-VOM GRÖLLER - Not at home and yet at home

Friedl Kubelka is internationally known for her conceptual photographs and experimental short films. As a filmmaker, she has been calling herself Friedl vom Gröller since 2009. However, it is little known that the artist has also been drawing and painting since she began her artistic career around 1970.

Since then, she has created over 150 drawings and gouaches, which have rarely been seen in public. These small-format, fantastically realistic works on paper are among her most personal: intimate, rich in detail and surprisingly colourful, they tell stories of life, death, love, lust, jealousy, isolation, joy and exuberance in all their combinations.

A selection of the gouaches is shown in this exhibition alongside a handful of films. An extended film programme is taking place at the Blickle Cinema.

Curated by Stefanie Reisinger and Dietmar Schwärzler
Assistant curator: Vasilena Stoyanova
Architecture: Robert Vörös-Bauer

About the exhibition
Since 1969, the focal point of Friedl Kubelka-vom Gröller's artistic work has been her studio in Gartengasse in Vienna's fifth district, which has also served as a school and therapy room at times. This central location for her wide-ranging activities is an essential point of reference in the conception of the exhibition: it is here that the artist continues to work rigorously on the human condition in small formats, combining photography, film, drawing and painting.

Kubelka-vom Gröller relentlessly depicts the individual and their emotional world in all the media she uses, but the immediacy of drawing and painting allows her an unusually intimate, direct and also vulnerable form of expression, which she has rarely shared with the public until now.

In her surprisingly colourful and detailed gouaches, the artist contemplatively recounts her private experiences, desires, crises and dreams. These works are based on the style of Fantastic Realism, initially inspired by exchanges with Hans Neuffer, Friedensreich Hundertwasser and Franz West.

She also experiments with narrative in a group of films, although the moving images are different in form due to the medium itself: while the gouaches are characterised by opaque, colourful brushstrokes and contain multifaceted details, her films are purist, mostly without sound, and shot in black and white on transparent 16mm celluloid. Despite the formal differences, there is an interesting thematic relationship between the moving images and the works on paper. They show condensed life situations and the emotional states associated with them, revolving around the living out and staging of fantasies and ideas. The relationship between these two media is explored in this exhibition.

Special programme:
5 March, 6 p.m.: Films by Friedl vom Gröller at Blickle Cinema
6 March, 6 p.m.: Carte blanche Friedl vom Gröller
2 April, 6:30 p.m.: Friedl Kubelka School for Independent Film
2 April: discussion series as part of the Open House with TBD
Guided tours: TBD

A bilingual catalogue (German/English) designed by Studio Hübner/Braun will be published by Walther König to accompany the exhibition.