Alexandra Baumgartner

Interview by Francesca Gavin

Does an object come with memory? Alexandra Baumgartner uses found material, ranging from photographs to furniture, as the basis for her work. The Austrian artist, who trained as a painter and initially worked with collage, now creates photographic and sculptural works that take these starting points to create atmospheric pieces that touch on ideas around psychology, trauma and what is hidden. With a nod to the history of modernism and Surrealism, her work questions the void. Things are cut out and placed in black space. Pieces are dramatically lit in dark spaces. The result is a body of work that juggles the conceptual and the emotional. The hidden here is just beneath the surface, and the artist invites us to dive in.

Francesca Gavin (FG): How did you first start working with found photographs and objects?

Alexandra Baumgartner (AB): I had already worked with found photographic pieces while studying painting. I started with photos of my own family, but then switched to anonymous photos, for the simple reason that I no longer found any material at home. Although I’m actually a trained photographer, I hardly took any of my own photos after graduation, which is kind of absurd! But I see no reason to create the template myself. I find it more exciting to discover something in an existing object that I can then emphasize and reinforce. As if this picture hadn't said everything yet; this is an impulse for me. Social media channels flood you with images. This fact no longer triggers in me the need to add new pictures to all of this, but rather to create something new with existing things. You could almost see it as recycling!

FG: Is there something that attracts you to the things you use? Something in an image that makes you stop and grab it?

AB: Roland Barthes' writings are very apt on this point. In his book Camera Lucida he defines the term "punctum," meaning "stitch, small spot, small cut" as the small place in a photograph that leaves an impression, dismay, an emotion—however, this isn’t originally intended, but is created by chance. The attraction is a photograph that cannot be described at first. I search and collect and see. There are photographs, picture templates, that appeal to me immediately though I cannot say exactly why. It is often a banal secondary representation, a strange look, a posture, a small detail in a photograph, which then triggers an emotion in me. I like to work it out, make it more visible, emphasize it. In my work there are often points, holes, incisions, stitches using a needle and thread. It is exactly this point that I want to emphasize and make visible.

FG: What are some of the kind of interventions you are making with the photographs?

AB: As I don’t work serially, but picture by picture, I decide individually what I need to do with each one. I follow my intuition. Sometimes, I reinforce facial expressions and gestures in a photograph by sewing them together, or by burning out parts and stacking other photographs. Sometimes, the picture becomes covered with stickers and only the outline remains; sometimes I only change the proportions by printing a life-sized photograph. It’s an intuitive decision with every new work.

2Harps, 2017

Wood, laquer, strings

FG: Is your approach to scale also intuitive?

AB: I like juxtapositions of scale, where totally new situations happen, and gestures are given more expression or certain aspects more weight. My installation 2Harps consists of two scaled-up harps with their strings interwoven. The objects needed to be eye-to-eye, steering the viewer's gaze towards what I want to communicate, and allowing them to dive into the work. In The Unknown, I enlarged a lamp from the 1970s by a factor of ten, filling up a whole space. This created a surreal situation, where there was very little space left for the viewer. The work encroached on you. The lamp, which is normally associated with warmth and light and homeliness, reverses its meaning and reduces your possibility of movement.

FG: You seem to like the monochrome in particular...

AB: It is strange that I always wonder when someone says that everything in my work is black and white, as I don't see it that way!

FG: Sorry!

AB: I think it's the reduction that leads me there. Colors distract me and I want to focus on this one feeling, on this one expression, on the content that I am working out. Most of my material is older; mostly black and white historical photographs from the 1930s to 1970s.

FG: What interests you about holes, cracks and punctures? There are lots of cracks and spaces in your all your works.

AB: Techniques that erase something are a big part my work. Like in Black Circle and Kosmos, whose source material was found family portraits and where I painted over the faces with black circles. Important image information disappears–the basic information of a face, expressions and emotion is deleted, so that as a viewer you can no longer read anything and are thrown back on yourself. Another picture is covered with round white office stickers. The circular shape also occurs again and again in my installation work. I think the closed circle is a form that cannot be evaded. A circle can either combine everything or exclude it. It can be seen both positively as belonging, but also negatively as exclusion. You are either inside the circle or outside.

"I've worked in many different studios over the years, from a large loft in Leipzig to a tiny studio in Paris. I find it interesting how the spatial situation affects my work—often contrary to what you'd expect. I started working with small collages in the big loft where I thought I would create huge paintings, but this room, this large loft, overwhelmed me so much that I pushed a small table into the corner and worked on collages for the first time. Conversely, I probably painted my largest pictures in this tiny studio in Paris."

FG: How do you title things?

AB: I find titles difficult because I’m a very intuitive person. A lot of titles result from conversations or questions and answers from others, like curators. I often give my works similar titles because it’s a sentiment that repeats itself, like “introspection.” The works are not really series because they’re made in different materials etc., but my titles are a series! I also ask questions I often cannot answer myself, so I find it nice when there’s still room for interpretation; where viewers can have their own thoughts and maybe even share them with me. That is also why works often have no title at all, so I leave it open and the scene is not pushed too much in one direction. There isn’t just my view of the object; the other person's perspective also counts, what emotions they associate with it. It remains open to interpretation.

FG: What interests you about space? Installation feels so vital here.

AB: The spatial installation work only began to emerge slowly - I had to first conquer the space for myself. For a long time, I put only two-dimensional works on the wall. My first installation work was Entreakt. I knew that I could no longer express some things with pictures alone and had to go into this empty space, filling the gap between viewer and work. Lighting now plays a major role in my work. With blackout curtains and spots, I can set visual axes and include the room, even if it remains empty. Framing has also become more and more important to me in recent years, so much I now see it as part of the work. A bad frame can ruin a piece. A frame is a limitation and can express a lot. I developed the idea of having corner frames built, such as a mirrored photograph of a woman looking at herself across the corner. Or a life-size print of a boy, which I then put into a corner frame standing on the floor as if it were folded. This feeling of being bent, also in a humorous way, is made possible by this frame.

FG: There is something ghostly about your works.

AB: The incomprehensible often frightens people more than the tangible. The physical is more normal than the psychological. That is why it certainly excites me to think about it and normalize it: to start a discussion about it.

Introspection 05, 2018

Plaster bust, pedestal, pigment print

FG: What interests you about that human presence, that sense of mystery?

AB: Darkness has always fascinated me and is also typical in my work. I always have a certain melancholy in me—a certain pessimism, nihilism. Everything has two sides. It’s often where something is its most beautiful that sadness comes, because you become so aware of the transient, the finite. I find this illusory world exciting. Especially in a time that strives for perfection, where everyone retouches filtered photos and fakes the perfect world. I find the questions behind it all the more exciting, the corners and edges, which don't have to be anything negative. The only negative is the contrast between appearance and reality. In my work, questions remain open and it is never entirely clear what it is. I want the viewer to create their own associations. Humor plays an equally important role in my work, even if it is black humor!

FG: Do you feel that here is a particular influence from Vienna or Austrian art history or history in the work? Modernism feels to be something feeding in to what you do for example.

AB: Maybe it's more the influence of the Viennese soul. I studied here, my main residence is in Vienna. But I lived in Berlin for ten years, where I became more aware of the unconscious influence of my homeland. The morbid is something very present here. Death is more of a conversational topic—not always seriously, but also in a tragic-comic way.

FG: What are some of your current influences? Are you looking at other artists?

AB: I am interested in seemingly secondary objects. Much of my work is "search and find." I work a lot with found material (photography, objects) then I see something that captures my imagination, and I would like to work out this "something." I usually have the best ideas unexpectedly, when I don't expect it at all, for example during a sleepless night. So the greatest inspiration often comes from the raw material and not from other artwork.

"Darkness has always fascinated me and is also typical in my work. I always have a certain melancholy in me—a certain pessimism, nihilism. Everything has two sides. It’s often where something is its most beautiful that sadness comes, because you become so aware of the transient, the finite."

FG: What things outside of art are an influence?

AB: Banal photos in private auction sites like eBay classifieds are inspiring. When someone shakes his table, which he wants to sell, out of focus and standing upside down, underexposed, next to a family member or in an untidy apartment. These are often the interesting inspirations. A photograph that is anything but aesthetically pleasing or promotional, precisely because of this inability and the included chance, an attraction, a charm.

FG: You trained as a painter. Is that something that feeds into the work now?

AB: I studied painting at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, and that became the dominating medium for me. After my diploma, when I had a studio in Leipzig in 2005, I started with collages, and later in Berlin I started making installations. So the medium was constantly expanding, but the source material and the intention of my work are the same. I work with found photographs and objects. And I decide individually whether I have to paint it, whether a collage is created or an installation. I don't make a difference in the media and they all influence each other.

FG: Tell me about your studio. How does your studio practice function?

AB: For many years I had a living studio in Berlin, where my life mixed with my work, which works well. Two years ago I moved back to Vienna, where I now have a large external studio where I can work separately from my apartment. I worked in many different studios over the years, from a large loft in Leipzig to a tiny studio in Paris. I find it interesting how the spatial situation affects my work. Often contrary to what you would expect—I started working with small collages in the big loft where I thought I would create huge paintings, but this room, this large loft, overwhelmed me so much that I pushed a small table into the corner and worked on collages for the first time. Conversely, I probably painted my largest pictures in this tiny studio in Paris. I find this reversal, this unconscious influence of room size on my work very exciting. Then I developed my interest in space. I now know that I don't need much space to work (just to store), but I need all my things around me, my little universe of templates and materials. I need a certain infrastructure of printing studios, frame builders etc., so I like to work in the same place.

Mask, 2018

Collage

FG: Your work seems to be about the interiors. Do you want to explore the psyche here and mental life?

In a way, this is the essence of my work. The “mental abyss” as a topic only fascinates me if isn’t obvious. The things behind the beautiful glow. How society deals with individuals. Many people who fall out of the norm, they don't function as expected. Ask what is normal. Neither is mutually exclusive. I'm definitely an artist who addresses the small private individual abysses of the psyche, but society is made up of individuals, so it affects the whole.

AB: What do you like about ambiguity?

What fascinates me is not the obvious, but the subtitle, the beautiful appearance, the "perfect world" that crumbles when you take a closer look. I try to show that in my work. I like when things stay open, ambiguous, something unclear; it stimulates thought and can never be thought through to the end. I’m interested in the unfinished and unspoken, so that there’s a friction at the surface and there is still room to think about it and ask questions. Missing parts make a picture interesting and disturbing. I want viewers to associate it with their own ideas.

FG: What do you find interesting about lived objects or images—things that have been used?

AB: I don't like perfection, that's why used objects and found photographs are more interesting for me, more truthful to me, because they don't show perfection, but traces of time, wear, color changes, patina. I am never concerned with smooth perfection, just as there is no perfection in life.

Francesca Gavin

Francesca Gavin is a curator and writer based in London. She is the Art Editor of Twin and editor-at-large at Kaleidoscope. She was the co-curator of the Historical Exhibition of Manifesta 11 and created exhibitions internationally including at the Palais de Tokyo and Site Sheffield, among others. Gavin has written six books including Watch This Space, 100 New Artists, and Hell Bound: New Gothic Art, and contributes to numerous publications including The Financial Times, Dazed, Another, and Newsweek. She has a monthly radio show Rough Version on NTS Radio on art and music where guests have included Adam Pendleton, Aria Dean, and Oscar Murillo among many others.