Current show
ORTsZEIT
Maria Maier
Photography and Painting
September 17 – October 22, 2010
ZS art Kunstraum shows two cycles of Maria Maier's work: "Zeitraum New York" and "Zeitraum Kuba", which equally broach the issues of transience and permanence.
With New York and Cuba, the German artist, who was born in 1954, selects two places which could not differ more in terms of their political and social settings as starting points for her works. This leads to the two places' different color and formal expressions becoming more manifest – this is taken up by Maria Maier and resumed. She pays particular attention to transient, situational elements and things she glimpsed by chance. Maria Maier decelerates her impressions into a state outside time. In this way, contemporary documents become a superordinate, universal motif. Maier's photos show transience and are made eternal by overpainting.
High-rise structures, crumbly facades, scrap, elements from building sites such as cables, gratings or switches – Maria Maier captures unnoticed architectural and urban details on camera and transfers them into new formal contexts with the means of painting and collage. Here the clear, potentially infinitely extensible structure of a metropolitan building turns into a dynamic form element, the coincidental tearing of a billboard, which reveals fragments of short-lived advertising messages, becomes the progression of time. In this process, photography, painting, serigraphy and collage represent equivalent elements of the works of the German artist, who combines them skillfully. Abstraction and figuration, identification and invention are no longer opposites but dissolve in perfect interaction.
Place and time link in an inspiring way and create a space outside any real place, real time, without the here and now, ignoring its anchoring in the present time and in our modern-day society. Maria Maier's works therefore push the ZS-art principle Connecting concepts forward in aesthetic, medial and social terms and connect artistic form with constructive social criticism.
Opening: 16 Sept. 2010, 19.30
Welcoming speech: Andrea Zehetbauer, Managing Director ZS art
Introductory words: Ines Gebetsroither, art historian, ZS art
The artist will be present.
ORTsZEIT at ZS art KunstRaum, Westbahnstr. 27-29, A-1070 Vienna:
Mon–Wed, Fri 11.00–19.00
Thu 11.00–21.00
and following prior appointment
Vienna Gallery Weekend
Fr 19.00–21.00: Happy Hour with New York and Cuban Cocktails
Sa 14.00: Talk with the artist Maria Maier
So 15.00: Guided Tour through the exhibition
Opening hours during Gallery Weekend:
Fr 10.00–21.00
Sa 10.00–19.00
So 10.00–19.00
press release (pdf) >
artist's bio (pdf) >
Pictures for free use:
Maria Maier: aus der Serie ZEITRAUM NY – architectural dialog, 2002, Fotografie und Malerei auf Holz, je 20 x 15 x 3 cm
Maria Maier: aus der Serie E-Mission, 1999, Fotografie und Röntgenaufnahme collagiert auf Karton, 80 x 60 cm
Maria Maier: aus der Serie ZR Kuba – Giving color, 2007, Fotografie übermalt mit Eitempera, 50 x 70 cm
All images: Courtesy ZS art gallery, Vienna
