Markus Schinwald
Markus Schinwald gives inanimate objects personalities of their own: they have good moods, bad moods, nervous tics, and psychological baggage. His paintings, sculptures, and installations have “issues,” in the way that most relationships do. Conversely, he also imagines a world where a state of mind could give rise to an object. “What if,” the work asks, “a moment of anxiety could generate a neck brace?”
Buying minor 19th-century portraits at auction, Schinwald carefully alters the images by adding incoherent characteristics such as surgical masks, straightjackets, neck braces, nose piercings, or even orthodontic apparatuses. These new details manipulate as much as they decorate. The types of portraits he purchases proliferated during the Biedermeier era (1815–48), when restrictive political policies and censorship resulted in conservative paintings of poised figures in buttoned-up shirts and flawless hairdos. Schinwald intervenes by adding possible defects, and imagines how the sitter’s interior mental state might manifest itself in the form of an artificial prosthesis, albeit one with a purpose that remains unclear. One can only presume that should the figure’s mood change, or a sudden moment of panic or joy emerge, the prosthesis might disappear or readjust.
Schinwald represented Austria in the 2011 Venice Biennale. He has …
Markus Schinwald gives inanimate objects personalities of their own: they have good moods, bad moods, nervous tics, and psychological baggage. His paintings, sculptures, and installations have “issues,” in the way that most relationships do. Conversely, he also imagines a world where a state of mind could give rise to an object. “What if,” the work asks, “a moment of anxiety could generate a neck brace?”
Buying minor 19th-century portraits at auction, Schinwald carefully alters the images by adding incoherent characteristics such as surgical masks, straightjackets, neck braces, nose piercings, or even orthodontic apparatuses. These new details manipulate as much as they decorate. The types of portraits he purchases proliferated during the Biedermeier era (1815–48), when restrictive political policies and censorship resulted in conservative paintings of poised figures in buttoned-up shirts and flawless hairdos. Schinwald intervenes by adding possible defects, and imagines how the sitter’s interior mental state might manifest itself in the form of an artificial prosthesis, albeit one with a purpose that remains unclear. One can only presume that should the figure’s mood change, or a sudden moment of panic or joy emerge, the prosthesis might disappear or readjust.
Schinwald represented Austria in the 2011 Venice Biennale. He has had solo exhibitions at CAPC Musée d’Art Contemporain in Bordeaux, Kunstverein Hannover, Kunsthaus Bregenz, Migros Museum in Zurich, and M – Museum Leuven. His work has been included in group exhibitions at Tate Modern, Kunstraum Innsbruck, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin, Kunsthalle Wien, Malmo Art Museum, and Boston’s ICA, among other institutions.
Courtesy of CCA Wattis
Tate Modern, London, UK
MUMOK –Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna, Austria
Museum der Moderne, Salzburg, Austria
Museum Belvedere, Vienna, Austria
Wien Museum, Vienna, Austria
Maison européenne de la photographie, Paris, France
Museée d’Art moderne, Paris, France
MUSAC – Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, Spain
Kunsthaus Zürich, Switzerland
Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zürich, Switzerland
Yvon Lambert, Paris, France
