Christine & Irene Hohenbüchler
06 Jun - 21 Jul 2018
CHRISTINE & IRENE HOHENBÜCHLER
06 June – 21 July 2018
The work of Christine and Irene Hohenbüchler engages with different sociotopes, exploring their microcosms in order to develop what are often participatory forms of art projects with the relevant protagonists.
What the artists themselves titled "multiple authorship" relates to the twin sisters' joint work, which in this case not only comprises a twofold but, in a psychoanalytical sense, brings components of multiple personalities into play, supplementing these further with the participation of other individuals. This differentiated, situation-specific working method frequently allows the Hohenbüchler sisters' works to emerge in new forms, whereby there is no superficial preference regarding the levels of expression of particular media. The focus on different forms of materiality and textures is always being re-explored. This is also due to the fact that the twin sisters, who have been exhibiting together since 1988, themselves come from different disciplines: Irene from painting and Christine from sculpture. For both of them, the artistic act per se should be in the foreground of a discussion where the resulting product is merely the outcome of a long process of discussion and reflection.
In the exhibition for Galerie Martin Janda, the two artists are showing works produced over several decades that emphasise the diversity of their oeuvre. Text also adopts a significant role, prompting Irene Hohenbüchler to develop her own typography. The processual nature of the work is to be appreciated in two metal sculptures from 2006 that are based on drawings where the twins allude to the botanical watercolours by the Viennese painter Moritz Michael Daffinger (1790–1849) showing the structural composition of plants. These are juxtaposed by quotations referencing the skeletal drawings of single-cell organisms by the zoologist Ernst Hackel (1834–1919). This dialogue between different living structures is rendered visible in the cage-shaped metal pavilions, which are also reminiscent of the patterns of the Wiener Werkstätte. Photographs of views of nature taken in Zöbing near Vienna are also to be regarded in this context. This chain of references and narratives makes the complex approach underlying the Hohenbüchlers' works clear, and the artistic end-products have to be contextualised in cyclical combinations of contents.
The phenomenon of different types of communication was visualised back in 1995, in the DAAD TISCH table, completed in Berlin while on a DAAD scholarship. The personal realm frequently plays a part in the process of engaging with social structures and their composition, as is also reflected in the wardrobe-style display cases containing clothes that embody specific fashions, shapes and periods of taste. The focus on the body is also recognizable in the recent drawings, where alien-like figures appear in the images and, as so often in the Hohenbüchlers' works, address issues of the need for protection, exclusion and a necessary sense of togetherness.
Text: Walter Seidl
Christine and Irene Hohenbüchler, *1964, live and work in Eichgraben, Vienna and Muenster.
06 June – 21 July 2018
The work of Christine and Irene Hohenbüchler engages with different sociotopes, exploring their microcosms in order to develop what are often participatory forms of art projects with the relevant protagonists.
What the artists themselves titled "multiple authorship" relates to the twin sisters' joint work, which in this case not only comprises a twofold but, in a psychoanalytical sense, brings components of multiple personalities into play, supplementing these further with the participation of other individuals. This differentiated, situation-specific working method frequently allows the Hohenbüchler sisters' works to emerge in new forms, whereby there is no superficial preference regarding the levels of expression of particular media. The focus on different forms of materiality and textures is always being re-explored. This is also due to the fact that the twin sisters, who have been exhibiting together since 1988, themselves come from different disciplines: Irene from painting and Christine from sculpture. For both of them, the artistic act per se should be in the foreground of a discussion where the resulting product is merely the outcome of a long process of discussion and reflection.
In the exhibition for Galerie Martin Janda, the two artists are showing works produced over several decades that emphasise the diversity of their oeuvre. Text also adopts a significant role, prompting Irene Hohenbüchler to develop her own typography. The processual nature of the work is to be appreciated in two metal sculptures from 2006 that are based on drawings where the twins allude to the botanical watercolours by the Viennese painter Moritz Michael Daffinger (1790–1849) showing the structural composition of plants. These are juxtaposed by quotations referencing the skeletal drawings of single-cell organisms by the zoologist Ernst Hackel (1834–1919). This dialogue between different living structures is rendered visible in the cage-shaped metal pavilions, which are also reminiscent of the patterns of the Wiener Werkstätte. Photographs of views of nature taken in Zöbing near Vienna are also to be regarded in this context. This chain of references and narratives makes the complex approach underlying the Hohenbüchlers' works clear, and the artistic end-products have to be contextualised in cyclical combinations of contents.
The phenomenon of different types of communication was visualised back in 1995, in the DAAD TISCH table, completed in Berlin while on a DAAD scholarship. The personal realm frequently plays a part in the process of engaging with social structures and their composition, as is also reflected in the wardrobe-style display cases containing clothes that embody specific fashions, shapes and periods of taste. The focus on the body is also recognizable in the recent drawings, where alien-like figures appear in the images and, as so often in the Hohenbüchlers' works, address issues of the need for protection, exclusion and a necessary sense of togetherness.
Text: Walter Seidl
Christine and Irene Hohenbüchler, *1964, live and work in Eichgraben, Vienna and Muenster.