Analyzing:

Influenced by conceptual art, my works are established between the fields of performative and installation art. By utilizing different kinds of artistic media, including photography, video and sculpture, my work questions authenticity of artworks and the gap between the art-market and the artist as its potential participator. Instead of giving refined didactic answers my work shows the formal process of my investigations.

Memories and archives in the form of text, which by its anticipation evokes images in the viewers‘ mind, is one important aspect of my work. I perform simple interventions in ordinary items to detach them from their original context and to allow the recipient a different point of view.

My latest works deal with issues of collecting, ownership and authorship. I am highly interested in the creation of notional images by removing other already existing images. The dematerialization and deconstruction of images into pure descriptions of themselves and vice versa are part of my deliberations.

For the video Analyzing, Adolfo Profumo, a psychoanalyst in New York, whom I’ve never met before, tries to tell me who I am just by looking through my portfolio. The video questions the certainty of art interpretations.

—Maria Anwander

Bio:

Maria Anwander works and lives in Berlin. After her diploma at the academy of fine arts in Vienna in 2008 she spent one year in Bilbao for a residency, three months in the Harlem studio fellowship program in New York and two months at the Casino Luxembourg.

Beside solo and group exhibitions throughout Austria and Germany her works were also shown in Utrecht, London, Bilbao, Cyprus, Illinois, Venice, New York, Moscow and Sydney including the 4th Biennale in Moscow and a satellite-project at the Venice Biennale. Since 2008 she won several prizes and competitions such as the Alexander-Reznikov-Award, the Pfann-Ohmann Group-Award and an art-as-construction competition from the Vorarlberger Landesmuseum in Bregenz, where she created the 230-meter long construction fence. For the Künstlerhaus Thurn und Taxis in Bregenz she further curated the show “Gaming the System – rank the ranking or fuck the curator” which examined the commercial art scene.

www.maria-anwander.net