Kunsthalle Wien prize winner 2003, exhibition opening 16/12 2003
Take a seat and have your portrait taken!
Prize of the Kunsthalle Wien supported by DORDA, BRUGGER, JORDIS” Attorneys at Law
This year’s Kunsthalle Wien Prize is awarded to Maria Pia Lattanzi (born 1973, class of Adolf Frohner) for the presentation of her work “Tapetentüren zu Menschenbildern”. The portrait cycle is characterised by multiple layers, both in the process of creation and in the depiction of the classic portrait subject.
The complex pictures merge abstract and figurative elements. In various stages, techniques and media, figurative portraits are abstracted and intertwined with expressive, ornamental structures. The people are approached through photographic, digital and painterly processes of alienation, transfer and selection. However, the starting point for all of them is an armchair in the artist’s studio.
Curator: Gabriele Mackert
In this series, I have tried to adapt the classic subject of portraits to people from my environment in multi-layered processes and depictions.
I invited friends and acquaintances to have their portraits painted in my painting chair in the studio. I combined figurative and abstract elements in several work steps and reduced details to high-contrast drawings reminiscent of silhouettes. Expressive and ornamental structures merge until background and person become one. The ornamental structures are intended to describe the individual characters subjectively. Their individuality is expressed through perspective, posture and gestures. The wallpaper pattern stands for the hidden and the studio chair is the only link between all the pictures.
