Markus Schinwald at the Austrian Pavilion

Austria will be represented this year at the Biennale di Venezia by artist Markus Schinwald, born 1973 in Salzburg and now living and working in Vienna and Los Angeles. The says Biennale commissioner will be artist Eva Schlegel. Schinwald's works go beyond visual perception and condense that moment when the rational mind's control of the body diminishes. This is to be seen particularly clearly in the manipulations of portraits, lithographs and sketches from the 19th century purchased at auctions, in antique shops or flea markets: the artist matches his interventions to the style of the original so closely that they look as if they had always been there. In his Venice project, Markus Schinwald examines the Austrian Pavilion built 1934 by Josef Hoffmann, an architectural landmark in and around the Giardini district. In the context of the general theme of ILLUMInations as defined by Bice Curiger, Markus Schinwald negotiates the representation and manipulation of space, time, light and shadow. Not only does he transform the spatial experience through an element of disturbance between the visible and the concealed, but also leaves, and addresses, the pavilion's architecture and history as it is, with all its breaches, rifts, and blanks, and thus succeeds to give sociopolitical visibility to the inscrutable.