M. Bruckmüller - [ˈfeːtɪʃ ]

M. Bruckmüller (A) - [ˈfeːtɪʃ ]

Softopening: We., 3. March 2021, starting 17.00 o'clock
Introduction: Mag. E. Sonnberger (arts historian AK-OÖ)

Duration of exhibition: 4.3. 2021 - 30.3. 2021

Had the artist from Upper Austria in her earlier works still dealt with flowers and plants, whereby it is not the full bloom in all its glory, which interested her, but it is the life cycle of a plant, that is, the growth and flowering to withering and death. Where is this more directly to observe and capture than in these very plants. Thus, in this exhibition at the Ulrike Hrobsky Gallery, she goes one step further. She shows the plant as a whole with the roots - so also what is not visible.
Her technique and image composition in photography are particularly noteworthy. Thus, the first glance of her picturesque-looking photographs is reminiscent of baroque still lifes: the colored blossoms shine out three-dimensionally from the dark background.

However, Michaela Bruckmüller's black is a real black, it literally sucks the viewer into the picture and opens up a world behind it that remains hidden from us. Yet the black is velvety matte and full of mystery. Despite the impenetrability, the space behind it is palpable. The artist achieves the plasticity with the help of a scanner, which she converts into a camera and serves her as a darkroom and provides for the deep black background of her works, on which the artichokes, the ranunculus, the tulips, the corn poppy, the hemlock, the branch of the yew or the white snowberry emerge so vividly and exquisitely.However, the focus of the current exhibition at Galerie Ulrike Hrobsky is the "Root Pictures". Even the title "Fetish" refers to her newly created series. The word fetish here does not mean sexual or erotic fetishism, which is usually meant, but Michaela Bruckmüller refers to the original meaning of this word. Originally, fetish referred to the worship of an inanimate object to which a person subjectively attached a special meaning.

This veneration often also became a fixed idea, which was provided with special rituals to elicit magic from the adored object. Bruckmüller's photographic works are always consciously constructed. One of the inspirations for the "Radix" series was an object from the collection of Rudolf II, who in the 17th century amassed a diverse cabinet of curiosities. It is the world-famous pair of mandrakes in the Natural History Museum. The arm and leg-like root tendrils of these poisonous nightshade plants give them a strange, almost human appearance.

Michaela Bruckmüller traces associative thoughts about this in her paintings. She digs up roots, photographs them, sews clothes on them and then places them, like mandrakes, in death boxes.
Michaela Bruckmüller stirs up our imagination, she puts lace skirts on the roots, similar to the clothes that saintly figures in the churches of Latin America still wear today. She creates new stories and wondrous pictorial spaces full of mystery with the seeds she plants for us with her paintings. [MH/UJ]

More information about the artist and the exhibition can be found in the following "download links" (work info), or under the directory ARTISTS.

Video tour of exhibition [ˈfeːtɪʃ ] /

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M. Bruckmüller (A) - [ˈfeːtɪʃ ]

Duration of exhibition: 4.3. 2021 - 30.3. 2021

Artist's portrait © Gallery U. HROBSKY