Christina Gschwantner

Contemporary Abstract Black Artwork Dots Pastel Colors Christina Gschwantner

2024

Christina Gschwantner combines contrasting art movements such as Art Informel and Minimal Art. She succeeds in depicting and creating her very own view of the world. A world that, surprisingly, makes the viewer feel that it is a part of themselves. Her rhythmic scenarios seem strangely familiar and appear to rise up from deep within the storehouses of consciousness. They create a feeling of wellbeing and joy, but also an interested, almost philosophical thoughtfulness. There are two different active principles in her entire oeuvre. The haptic-gestural painterly (informel) and the formal-structural (Minimal Art). At the beginning of her artistic career, both components emerge sporadically from the pictures, but in the course of her creative periods, both principles become more concrete and sharper and appear to stand separately side by side and yet function as a unit. And that is unusual and fascinating, because this clear separation of the painterly and the formal leads to a structural, strict composition that allows the artist's free informal painting to shine all the more clearly. One is almost inclined to conclude that the matrix-like, fixed arrangement of her painting elements means that each element has to assert itself against the others in order to "appear" "representative" in the picture. We know from real life that this can lead to strange results. But we first have to understand what this means for the artist. Because the task of giving each element its proper place and meaning in a figurative sense requires painterly and gestural effort.And it is understandable that something quickly changes in such a structure when a component changes its "mood“. For this reason, her paintings are alive - when one is "finished", it is ultimately only a snapshot. The result is more than just a picture - it is actually a social structure - a relationship painting - in Christina Gschwantner's case usually a positive, even happy one. Christina Gschwantner's intensive and long-term preoccupation with the "relationship matrix" theme has led to an increasingly focussed, reduced and high-contrast visual language. This becomes clear when looking at her work as a whole.