Academy

A Song of Ascents and Viscous City

Duration: ca. 45 min
Group size: up to 15 persons
Also available in English 

Admission to the exhibition is free. The guided tour is 1 Euro per person for students.

Registration: cf@​halle-​fuer-​kunst.​at; 0316 740084

1) Photography and Other (Digital) Sources as Starting Points and Inspiration

Both Louise Giovanelli and Evelyn Plaschg use photography as a central starting point for their painterly work. However, photographic material is not merely used for reproduction, but rather serves as a basis for transformation and artistic development. 

Plaschg, for example, uses photographs to experiment with compositions, color harmonies, and visual details. The photographic reference is not copied in the classical sense but is instead distorted and reinterpreted through painterly processes. The exhibited works from the past six years are based on playful photographs often taken with a smartphone, showing intimate and casual moments. Translated into luminous pigments on paper, they explore the tension between authenticity, staging, and digital image aesthetics. Rather than individual portraits, fragmented bodily gestures and anonymous constellations take center stage, capturing the sensibility of a younger generation.

Giovanelli, particularly in her series of curtain paintings, draws on photographs she took herself in so-called Working Men’s Clubs. She also maintains a large digital archive of over 1,000 images, which she continuously uses as visual reference material – including content from platforms like Instagram, which function as collective image repositories.

Historically, painting and photography have long had a complex and tension-filled relationship. Since the 19th century, photography has increasingly taken over the role of realistic depiction, prompting the development of many avant-garde art movements – ones that explicitly moved away from mimetic representation. Giovanelli and Plaschg continue this lineage in their works by not treating the photographic image as a final product, but as raw material for painterly expansion. They draw not only on photographs, but also on film stills, digital images, and visual codes of pop culture, resulting in a complex interplay between analog and digital image worlds.

In this tour, we aim to explore how both artists stage and reflect on the relationship between photography and painting in their work.

2) Ecstasy & Intoxication

Both the painter Louise Giovanelli and the musician and visual artist Evelyn Plaschg engage with the phenomenon of ecstasy in their respective practices – a state marked by intense emotional, physical, or spiritual experience, often manifesting in trance-like or euphoric states. Historically, this term was also referred to as ​“rapture,” describing moments in which individuals seem to transcend everyday thresholds of consciousness, experiencing heightened and intensified perception. These are exceptional states that can be experienced as euphoric and sensual, but also as unsettling or boundary-breaking. 

As part of this joint tour through the exhibitions, we will approach the multifaceted notion of ecstasy. This will not only involve concrete expressions such as music, dance, or love – classic fields of ecstatic experience – but also other situations in which people abandon their habitual perceptions of self and the world. We are interested in both the aesthetic strategies the two artists use to address such states and the societal, psychological, and cultural implications of the ecstatic. 

Another focus will be a critical reflection on the ambivalences of ecstatic experience. While ecstasy is often associated with freedom, self-transcendence, or spiritual elevation, it also harbors the potential for dissolution of boundaries, loss of control, and even self-erasure. Giovanelli and Plaschg’s work also navigates this field of tension: both artists develop unique approaches to address experiences often described as ​“supernatural” or ​“transcendent.” Their artworks offer layered perspectives on the experience of intoxication, while also raising questions about its social meaning, artistic representation, and emotional impact. 

In this tour, we will explore how the two artists stage and reflect the relationship between photography and painting in their work.
 

3) Ambiguity in Form & Abstraction: Figuration & the Social

In the ways Louise Giovanelli and Evelyn Plaschg use color and form, we can observe clear references to art history – particularly the history of painting – as well as to the image strategies of pop culture. Both artists operate in a space of oscillation between realistic and abstract visual elements. Plaschg’s paintings are largely abstract in formal language, addressing questions of corporeality, figuration, and spatiality – while also seeking to deconstruct them. This layered approach creates a tension between presence and absence, visibility and dissolution.

Giovanelli’s work draws on the image traditions of the Renaissance, notably Titian, connecting these art historical references with contemporary concerns. Plaschg, in turn, draws from the formal vocabulary of still life painting and artists such as Georgia O’Keeffe, whose work is characterized by a sensual engagement with natural forms and corporeality. Both artists subtly address social conditions and systemic issues by presenting object-like references as carriers of cultural and social meaning. 

Giovanelli’s curtains, for instance, can be read allegorically as references to the identity crisis of the working class, while also borrowing from naturalistic depictions in Renaissance and Baroque painting. Plaschg, by contrast, shifts the human body away from the center of depiction without negating it entirely. In her work, the body is evoked through the materiality and texture of the painted surface, pointing to urban experiences. In this context, Plaschg conceptualizes the city itself as a body – interwoven with movement, memory, and affective inscriptions. This metaphorical reading opens up an expanded understanding of corporeality in the context of contemporary painting.