Eröffnung Giovanelli / Plaschg — HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark

Opening

Louise Giovanelli, *Scala*, 2024
Evelyn Plaschg, *Congestion* (detail), 2025
Oil on canvas, 250 × 320 cm, Courtesy the artist and White Cube, London, Photo: Michael Pollard; Oil on canvas, 200 × 155 cm, Courtesy the artist and Layr, Vienna, Photo: kunst-dokumentation.com

The young painter Louise Giovanelli is considered the discovery of her generation in England. Thanks to her special technique, she creates hypnotic paintings that allow light to radiate from them on a visual and metaphorical level. Her hyper-realistic works feature mysterious cult objects, such as suggestive stage curtains, a shimmering mop of hair or the reflective surface of a cocktail glass. Female characters appear in them, seemingly caught in a moment between awe and despair or on the verge of crossing a boundary of experience to the point of ecstasy. Her motifs are deliberately ambiguous and associated with the vagueness of a memory or a half-forgotten dream. The exhibition takes place in cooperation with The Hepworth Wakefield (Yorkshire) and Museum Villa Stuck (Munich).

The Styrian artist Evelyn Plaschg is regarded as an outstanding young painter in Austria and beyond. Her painterly expression has a lot to do with the attitude to life of her generation, which has practised and internalized the exhibition, staging and optimization of bodies like no other before it. The works tell of their own physical desire in interaction with their counterparts, the collective experience in real and imagined communal spaces and social structures in which they come together. With Viscous City, Plaschg describes an interest in urban space and its architecture in order to allow herself and her gaze to drift within it.

Both shows feature contemporary paintings by strong young women who not only reveal their attitudes and interests in their artworks, but also see painting as a medium for not only trying things out, but also making decisions. In a way, the pictures look back at what the artists consider to be so essential, beyond the fast pace of their young generation, in order to paint a lasting picture.

Artists

Participating artists

Solo exhibitions (selection): Museum Villa Stuck, Munich (2025), TANK Shanghai (2025), GRIMM, New York (2025, 2023, 2021, 2020), Hepworth Wakefield, Yorkshire (2024), He Art Museum, Foshan (2024), White Cube, Hong Kong (2024), Moon Grove, Manchester (2023), GRIMM, Amsterdam (2020), Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool (2022, 2016), White Cube Bermondsey, London (2022), Frutta Gallery, Rome (2019), Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester (2019), Workplace Foundation, Gateshead (2019), Warrington Museum and Art Gallery, Warrington (2019).

Group exhibitions (selection): AkzoNobel Art Foundation, Amsterdam (2025, 2024, 2021), Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas (2025, 2022), Hastings Contemporary, Hastings (2024), Nasjonal Museet, Oslo (2024), The Courtauld Gallery, London (2024), Centraal Museum, Utrecht (2024), Hill Art Foundation, New York (2023), FLAG Art Foundation, New York (2023), CICA, Vancouver (2023), White Cube, Seoul (2023), Kasmin, New York (2022), Marlborough, London (2022), Hayward Gallery, London (2021), CLEARING, New York (2020), Air de Paris, Romainville (2020), Pablos Birthday Gallery, New York (2019), Arcade Gallery, London (2019).

Solo exhibitions (selection): Paulina Caspari, Munich (2024), Scherben, Berlin (2024), Layr, Vienna (2023), Galerie Kirchgasse, Steckborn (2021), Canopy, Malmoe (2021), Kunstverein Nürnberg, Nuremberg (2021), Pina, Vienna (2020), Parallel Vienna, Vienna (2019), Zeller van Almsick, Vienna (2017).

Group exhibitions (selection): Esther II, New York (2025), Leopold Museum, Vienna (2024), Hard Scent Salon, Copenhagen (2024), Belvedere 21, Vienna (2023), The Grand Chelsea, New York (2023), Kunstverein Eisenstadt (2022), Basel Social Club, Basel (2022), Kunstverein Bremerhaven (2022), Smolka Contemporary, Vienna (2021), Belvedere 21, Vienna (2019), Halle für Kunst, Lüneburg (2018), Acappella, Naples (2018), Forum Stadtpark, Graz (2017), Glovebox, Auckland (2016), ENSBA, Paris (2016), Neuer Kunstverein, Vienna (2016), MUMOK, Vienna (2015).