Hubert Scheibl - Fly

This exhibition will focus on the most recent artistic practice of one of the foremost Austrian painters, Hubert Scheibl. He studied under Max Weiler and Arnulf Rainer at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna from 1976 to 1981 and started exhibiting internationally in the mid-1980s, when his work was acknowledged as a significant reaction to the then popular style of neo-expressionism.
Scheibl is one of the most significant representatives of abstract-sensitive, gesture-intense painting amongst mid-generation Austrian artists, as well as being an assiduous draughtsman and photographer. The show juxtaposes large paintings with a compact environment, thereby transforming the architecture of the Orangery into a mysterious and evolving labyrinth of rooms and images. This stark contrast in scale results in the vast abstract canvases - so characteristic of Scheibl's work - disrupting the spatial structure, leading visitors on a journey through the artworks and hence transforming their awareness and experience of the picture plane. The overwhelming sensual and gestural nature of his work confronts the viewer with a different perception of the space that surrounds both the work and the viewer him-/herself, giving rise to an alteration and transfiguration of the traditional relationship between exhibition space and spectator.