An art student spilled coffee and just wiped away the mess: “Hopefully the cleaning lady will do the rest!” Such and other everyday experiences inspired the artist Elke Punkt Fleisch to create the series of sculptures “All-purpose cleaners”.
The material clay and cleaning utensils, the figures between 45 and 79 centimeters high, aesthetically pleasing and with a certain “humor”. Also with a food for thought. The artist speaks of the low social status of the cleaning ladies (embellished: “cleaning workers”): “They do the work that nobody wants to do at a time when nobody else is to be found.”
Elke Punkt Fleisch, born in Grieskirchen in 1980, is represented at the Hofkabinett gallery in Linz. Works by Katharina Brandl can also be found here, who formed a globe out of hotel soap and called liquid earth “Liquid Earth”. Globalization and nomadism, the wealthy – a pilot collected the soaps for Brandl – vagabond via hotel.
Or works by Auguste Kronheim, who died the previous year, including a self-portrait from a six-year stay in Nepal. Puzzling, marked with signs that first need to be deciphered.
dried up life
stories, stories! Erratic art is for the idolaters, interesting art is alive but has thousands of stories. The result, the “work of art”, is often just dried up, concentrated vitality poured into shape. The stories can be told, experienced, an excellent opportunity is once more offered at this year’s art salon in the Linz Castle. Many artists are present. The artists are mostly friendly people, don’t bite and are happy to explain backgrounds. what is her art Why?
Petrified Linen
From Friday to Sunday, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., 18 Upper Austrian galleries and art associations are showing the work of 64 artists, almost two thirds of whom are women. Established classics can be explored in the sales exhibition, the Gmundner Gallery 422 comes up with Damisch, Attersee, Prachensky and Lena Göbel, among others. The Schloss Puchheim Gallery is showing Florian Nitsch in a solo presentation, while the Paschinger Galerie in the Schmiede is showing works by Franz Blaas dating back to the 1980s.
The young gallery Dumas, which is making its debut in the art salon this year, sets a certain counterpoint. One of the Dumas artists is Florian Nörl, a native German who studied at the Linz Art University. Nörl is particularly interested in the material, using his own method to “petrify” old bed linen (!). The designed canvas supposedly hard as stone, but feels – if only one might finally reach for the works! – velvety on the surface. The intimate place bed and sediments beautifully linked in a work title: “Sedimental”.
people & toads
A tour for extensive browsing, you might meet an artist like Elisabeth Peterlik. Born in Ried and living in Puchenau near Linz for a long time, Peterlik is represented with her works in the Rieder 20gerhaus. An absolute free spirit, to be found in the castle with a black “mourning bonnet”, descendant of the traditional gold bonnet, Perterlik sees no rifts between the traditional and the new creation. You can also see a “spiked hood”, the result of a stressful time when mental armor was also necessary. Lovable, refined Peternik’s animal portraits – once more with a lot of history in the background. Three toads hang one on top of the other on the wall, cute animals and, for Peterlik, a haven from the idols of the present: speed, attractiveness, flexibility. Toads are wondrous creatures, their silhouettes human. A toad as if pulling a long nose. Peterlik also aptly calls the picture: “Etsch!”
By Christian Pichler
