Text by Dr. Ludger Drost on the exhibition PerspektivWechsel
We only realize how strongly we associate the image of the Creator, the Pantocrator, the Good Shepherd and other Christian imagery with a male figure when it appears as a woman in identical iconography. In a fourteen-part series of paintings, Evelyn Kreinecker has completed the change of perspective from the divine “He” to the “She” – the overall title – and is exhibiting it for the first time in the former church space of the St. Anne’s Chapel in Passau.
The change of perspective is also constitutive for Petra Fohringer’s works. Her pictures from the “Second Hand Recollection” series, some of which were created especially for the Annakapelle, explore second-hand visual memory. The motifs taken from newspaper cuttings, films and other sources appear to us as personal memories. Fohringer transfers them into the traditional format of an oil painting on canvas and refers to the subjective perspective that originally underlies the image.
Stefan Mittlböck-Jungwirth-Fohringer’s “Lehnbilder” demand a change of perspective from the viewer, as we encounter them leaning against the wall instead of hanging. In addition, there are border crossings between artistic and naturalistic approaches to the world. Among other things, the project “The Bien”, which was installed in the apex chapel of Linz Cathedral in 2018, will be on display. The perspectives of the naturalist and the artist intersect in this installation on the extinction of a bee colony.
