Markus Schinwald Solo Exhibition

Text/Photos by Chen Chi-Hsiang. Dates: March 12 to April 9. Location: Thaddaeu Ropac Gallery, Paris. Markus Schinwald (b. 1973) is an Austrian mid-career artist known for works full of mystery, psychology, spirituality, consciousness, and anecdotal elements. His work is diverse and multifaceted; he excels in new media (video), traditional oil painting and drawing, innovative sculptures, and spatial installations, dramatically reflecting the sociology, philosophy, and psychology of today's world, even echoing narcissism.

Schinwald’s painting and drawing styles appear quite academic, yet they are not merely so; his exquisite craftsmanship is admirable. He is skilled at appropriating classic Biedermeier-era figure paintings from Western tradition and adding incongruous prosthetic elements to the figures' faces. This act enhances the tension, imagination, and mystery of the portraits, creating a timeless aesthetics that brings viewers into an esoteric journey. This experience is not just visual or imaginative but involves bodily emotional assimilation.

In this new solo exhibition in Paris, Schinwald presents three major series: New Paintings – in an academic style, with particularly large square formats, reversing the argument centered on figures. Figures or studio models are reduced in size, placed either off-center (below) or in corners. The entire canvas acts as a curtain-like surface, almost monochromatic, making the space seem infinitely vast. In another piece, a small figure sits dead center against a two-toned sky and ground. Under the infinite beauty of the sunset, the grand space makes humans seem insignificant, yet the person remains central, suggesting human arrogance? It presents color-field abstract imagery. Beyond the psychological weight and anecdotal nature given to figures, it approaches color-field abstraction.

In the center of the large exhibition hall stands the Mechanical New Installation Sculpture Series. Likethree-dimensional pictures within large white wooden frames, they contain intricate wooden mechanical elements: gear wheels, cylindrical axles, branching tree-like structures. Simple mechanical movements rotate, intermittently emitting rhythmic tapping sounds (like beans) against the wooden frame, presenting a repetitive dance beat. These window-like white wooden frames play with emptiness and solidity, creating a symbolic dialogue between inside and outside, introspection and extroversion, poetry and imagination.

The upstairs series features Schinwald’s representative classic drawings, exquisitely crafted, filled with magical and imaginative portraits. Both men and women are dressed formally, with heads becoming the core of the composition. Faces are fitted with prosthetic supports on noses, eyes, mouths, ears, etc. These prosthetics become part of the painting’s context or concept. Most magically, this series covers faces or heads with clothing, hoods, or blindfolds, mysteriously presenting an extraordinary spiritual state volume, making the image more abstract. Between psychology and anecdote, imagination and profundity, figuration and abstraction, spirit and matter, it reveals a mysterious context.

This article refers to the press release for Markus Schinwald’s solo exhibition.