Xenia Hausner. TRUE LIES
This exhibition at the Albertina Museum presents one of the most important contemporary Austrian painters . The main focus of the show is on Xenia Hausner’s practice of staging, a technique characteristic of her work. For her paintings, Hausner first constructs and then photographs spatial settings in her studio. Automobile fragments or train compartments are transformed into inhabited places, scenarios in which trivial objects also participate and interact with her protagonists. Hausner’s figures emancipate themselves within a predominantly female cosmos and assume roles in narratives which resist clear interpretation. In fragmentary montages, close ups, the artist confronts us with innate contradictions we frequently overlook. it is precisely this fiction which makes it possible for Hausner, her gaze sharpened, to apprehend underlying truths and reveal them visually.
This exhibition is conceived as a retrospective, beginning with Xenia Hausner’s initial works from the 1990s and including her recent and moving series, The Exiles.
On view spring 2021.