SET – MARTINA STECKHOLZER

Martina Steckholzer’s conceptual artwork depicts contemporary figurative art spaces in which artistic-cultural media transmission (exhibition rooms, museums, galleries, TV studios) or the reflection on aluminium sculptures or wall projections occurs. The artist moves along the boundary between geometric abstraction and figurative representation, leading us towards a totally new point of view, in the centre of which are the most unimportant and insignificant elements.

Martina Steckholzer films and paints art spaces. She captures shots, single moments that serve as models for her artworks, which, in turn, immediately recall their cinematographic origin. The artist paints shady imprints, reflected light, mirror surfaces, hints and details of environments, exploring image temporalization and elusiveness, where spaces dissolve in their contours. Colour or black and white surfaces and lines, perspective cracks on the ceilings or floors recur in her paintings.
Martina Steckholzer explores the concept of image identification, with many levels of meaning embedded in her themes. Traces of space and light find their place on the canvas in a direct and fresh manner, and the painted image is both a trace and déjà vu. The exhibition “set” is much more than single image units placed side by side. The themes, all derived from the art context, suggest a corporeity only hinted at and rather fugacious, projections for the observer and his/her perception. The real centre of the “set” is the gap between the canvases and the observer in that place and that moment; an art representation in which functions and aesthetic, cultural and economic mechanisms are just some of the possible associations.

Martina Steckholzer maintains a free relationship with her themes and brush, creating an immediate effect on the artwork. The complex content level of her paintings balances with the aesthetic-sensorial effect. The paintings of Martina Steckholzer create a tension in which the observer, is continuously questioned, reflected, illuminated and moved. Martina Steckholzer, born in 1974 at Sterzing, lives and works in Vienna. After studying architecture in Innsbruck, she attended the Freie Kunstschule in Stuttgart, Germany. From 1997 to 1999 she studied painting at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, and in 2001, obtained the diploma of Multi Media Producer from the SAE Technology College in Vienna. In 2003, she finished her studies with Gunter Damisch and Heimo Zobernig at the Akademie der bildenden Künste in Vienna. In 2003, she received an award from the Ministry of Culture and, in 2004, the “planquadrat” prize, in Bozen. She has exhibited in many group shows since 1998 in Salzburg, Vienna and New York, and in 2005, in the Prague Biennale.
Solo exhibitions include Studio Galerie 5020, Salzburg (2001); “studio”, Kabinett, Salzburger Kunstverein (2004); “messe”, Galerie Meyer Kainer, Vienna (2004).