ABOUT

Gisela Stiegler (b. 1970, Austria) lives and works as an artist in Vienna. She holds an MA from the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, a degree in Photography from the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam and a degree in painting from the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. In her work Stiegler refers to movements within art-history and examines at how they can be envisioned today (e.g. carving techniques from an old Austrian rural tradition or opulent baroque carving).

GISELA’s NEW COLUMN SCULPTURES:
Untitled, 2020
Carved and cast in artificial marble
65 x 70 cm & 65 x 120 cm
Edition of 5

Within her sculptural body of work, Gisela Stiegler has been exploring and carving expanded polystyrene for more than ten years as her main raw material to work with. Over those years she has been developing a fascinating evolution and perfection of her technique and the treatment of this delicate and cutting edge contemporary material. She has also created an acclaimed series of lamps from recycled fish-boxes which she finely carves and lacquers. Her lamps are ready, closed, and finished objects, whereas her other sculptural work pleads for further work and experiment. The pieces are lacquered in silver, white, blue, steel, or bronze. This is when the pieces enter into conversation with the ‘other’. They become another kind and fake a long-gone time as well as another material and weight, appearing like architecture or monoliths, however alive.

BIO/CV

2021 Artist in Residence BKA, Moscow
2019 Artist in Residence, “Villa mon Charme”, Brussels
2010 Artist in Residence (Lillian Baylis School, Marion Friedmann) London 2007 Artist in Residence (Austrian State grant), Paris
2005 Founder of the Project GRAUZONE, Vienna
2003 State Award for Photography 2003 Foto-documentary of Tibet, China
2003 Atelier Grant, Paliano, Italy
2001 Artist in Residence (Austrian State grant), Rome 1999 Diploma at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna 1996-1997 State bursary, Rietfeld Academy, Amsterdam 1991-1995 MA University for Applied Arts, Vienna

EXHIBITIONS (solo and group shows, selection)

2020 Installtion at Art Fair; ‘Parallel Vienna’
2020 “Black & White”, Nöart, Upper Austria, Austria
2019 “Akropolis 21”, Artbox, art in public space, Museum Quarter, Vienna Austria
2018 Art – Design? QuadrART Dornbirn
2018 Oswald Oberhuber and Gisela Stiegler, Galerie Rauminhalt_Harald Bichler 2018 „Ästhetik der Veränderung“, Museum für Angewandte Kunst,
2017 ArtAustria, Palais Lichtenstein, Galerie Armann / Ruberl
2017 Art Vienna, group show, with Galerie Ruberl, Vienna
2017 Solo show, Rauminhalt, Vienna,
2016 “The Artist and his Double”, Galerie Ruberl, Vienna
2015 “Delicacy Revisited”, Marion Friedmann Gallery, London
2015 Art Athina, “Grauzone”, Athens
2015 “Sportcafe, Oper...”, “Kubatur”, Fluc, Vienna
2014 “Delicacy” with Marion Friedmann Gallery at MIART, MIlan
2014 “Lampenfieber”, Duo Raum, Vienna 2014 “Multiple Times”, Campoi Gallery, München
2013 “ANSAMMLUNGCAMPOI”, c/o Pilotprojekte, Düsseldorf 2013 “IBDF Abierto Méxicano de Diseño”, Marion Friedmann Gallery “Parallel Vienna”, Kunstraum am Schauplatz, Wien

2013 Prawneg & Wolf, Italien
2012 “Art&Function”, “Art&Antik”, Wien Hofburg, “Designart”, Innsbruck 2012 “Sail against the end”, Grauzone am Ufer, Wien
2012 “Designjunction”, MarionFriemann Gallery, London
2011 “Das Double und sein Theater”, Weindorf
2011 “Superdesign”, Marion Firedmann Gallery, London
2011 “Enlightened Waste”, Marion Friedmann Gallery, London
2011 “Objekte 2011”, Kunst/Handel 2011“today is tomorrow”, Artist Association Maerz, Linz
2011 Viennafair, SOS
2010 Herzfoundation, Viennabiennale
2010 MAK-night, Viennabiennale
2010 Mandragora, Kunstraum am Schauplatz
2009 “Nachbildung einer Wand” , Galerie Strickner,
2008 “Wiederherstellung einer Idee”, Grauzone
2007 Bank Austria, Tresorraum
2006 „inforNation” State of Sabotage, Istanbul
2006 „Konstruktionen und Seestücke”, Galerie CC, Graz
2005 Ausstellung „Grauzone” „Burggasse 100”
2004 „Natura Morta” Kulturforum Rom
2003 Thomas K. Lang Gallery, Webster University
2003 „Nuit blanche”, Paris, kur. Robert Fleck
2002 „art position” „As soon as possible” kur. Zenita Komad
2001 Chronos-roma, Rom
2000 Galerie Trabant, Messe Berlin
1998 „I’m on”, Semper Depot
1997 Alpenmilchzentrale „2 plateaux” Mezzanin
1997 Institut für Gegenwartskunst

ESSAY by Margareta Sandhofer: Art critic, Vienna, 2016:

It was about four years ago that I first met Gisela Stiegler. It was also my first encounter with her sculptures. I accompanied a joint friend on a visit to her studio or what Gisela calls her Grauzone or grey area.
Gisela was standing, a simple Stanley knife in her hand, in front of an expanded polystyrene block into which she was carving edged slats. Polystyrene crumbs were on and around her, the statically charged particles were everywhere – beautifully metaphorical, signifying sly perseverance and significance, and not to be shaken off.

These double or multiple meanings are perhaps the distinctive characteristic atmospherically surrounding Gisela’s person and her work – as expressed by both her theoretical reflections and her manifest artifacts, seemingly in mutual dialogue, challenging and driving each other.

These carved and notched polystyrene forms in the room, on the floor, and on the walls had a strange attraction for me: rhythmically structured, abstract creations, as if built for outer space – very strange and peculiar, especially in their coat of metallic blue car paint (a special paint for Maserati). These creations exuded a kind of controlled minimalism, inspiring awe, although this was seemingly undeserved or at least uncalled for. These curious carvings were absolutely self-sufficient in their confident solipsism. These sculptures are based on black-and-white photography, which, mainly in the form of still lifes, was Gisela’s preferred artistic medium until 2005. Gradually, initial by-products and secondary conditions became independent of the photographic activity: the motif of the still life photograph, e.g. a gnawed piece of bone, which previously had been the protagonist in focus, was dealt with separately from its mannered background.

The severed piece of bone was presented, following deliberate overexposure and subsequent underdevelopment, in front of a white background without any further embedment in the room, a paradoxical sculpture hovering disconnectedly like a U.F.O. in a void.
The background, in itself already illusion and deception with the playful latent image effect between two and three-dimensionality due to the foreshortening in the checkerboard design, was manipulated further by Gisela: she placed these painted surfaces together at varying angles and added the reflected and distorted planes from the analogue photographic image. Here and there underlain by a dark flat shadow cast by a cube, this photograph was mounted on a display wall. Any illusion was thus undermined, while the viewer’s conventional spatial perception was destabilised and relativized. Space and surface are a recurring dialectical, contradictory, and hence intensifying, principle in Gisela Stiegler’s work.

The background gradually became relevant as an object and was increasingly staged: Gisela combined expanded polystyrene planes with various structures and surfaces to form constructivist compositions for her photographs. She started carving notches into the expanded polystyrene blocks and taking photographs with various gloss levels and degrees of illumination. Expanded polystyrene became an ever more important material in her work and the photographic image soon became obsolete. What used to be the background came to the fore and became a self-sufficient protagonist. Expanded polystyrene as a material seems to defy physical limits, equating optical weight with actual lightness and image with mirage. This irregular freedom from evidence permitted excesses verging upon opulence. The reliefs gradually conquered the space, and soon they were standing tall as man-sized sculptures in the middle of the Grauzone.
The iconography of many of the works likewise seems ambivalent. Their form plays upon the nihilist elegance of a minimalist trick, the design and supposed utility of a piece of furniture, the simulated function of an architectonically set piece – yet does not commit to anything, apart from an unparalleled naturalness and irrefutable casualness, a confident attitude which conflicts starkly with the undecidedness of the artistic ambitions.

Gisela Stiegler implements a singularly non-classical concept of sculpture, which is strongly characterised by her photographic thinking. Volume, split into planes, is presented in a surface view, front view, back view, and a number of three-quarter views.
Equally, the large monochrome black foil pictures aspire to a haptic quality. The bulging and creased imperfections of the surface area, the interplay of the differently refracted light reflections, give the pictures subtle corporeality. At the same time, they catch up with the earlier pencil drawings with new complexity.

Rather than volumes in their original identity, the sculptures are condensed views put into concrete form in a sculpture. The genesis of the surface area grown into space seems to be one of their permanent inherent characteristics. The surface is organised into plane units, structured by notches which, like slats, are grouped into individual sub-areas. Even in the details, one encounters surfaces: the notches themselves are nothing but planes inclined towards each other, orchestrating the capture and reflection of light.

It is a metamorphosis from surface area to volumetric object – a plane turned into a sculpture that keeps turning back to its origin or its previous stages. In the background, each of Gisela’s figures harbours a profound, enigmatic longing for the plane.
And yet another urge complicates the state of the subjectified sculpture: within the sculptures, there is a persistent inclination towards the minimalist form and simultaneous resistance to this temptation. This formalist dialectic is felt only subtly; the problem breaks out in forceful aesthetics: rough cracks, coarse forms, harsh edges and notches, and avoidance of colour. Curves, if there are any at all, are not flatteringly gentle, but ironically counter the dominance of minimalism. Any trivial associations are blatantly provoked as arguments against vanguard gestures of reductionism. Colour is not employed as a means of design but is used in a purely functional manner as a signal: black as a non-colour, white as an all-encompassing colour, metallic blue for its abstract, dynamising artificiality. The direct encounter with these bizarre creations makes the viewer insecure. With an appealing unaffectedness, they demand direct engagement – in the in-between, in a Grauzone where a work of art borders on the scope of other categories like interior design, furniture, or everyday objects, only to reject it vigorously; in the complex relativity of surface area and space; the dialectic contradictoriness of the constantly countered minimalism; this subversive complexity, this sometimes ironic, sometimes mischievous ambiguity, results in an insistent puzzlement and fascination.