Modern Portrait "What´s going on? No.1" by Michaela Steinacher

This one-of-a-kind painting addresses the far-reaching corona pandemic and its aftermath. The painting title "What´s going on? No.1" shows two angry, enraged personalities. Inner determination gives strength and energy, but should be complemented by openness.

The artist Michaela Steinacher

The artist Michaela Steinacher (born 1972), who lives in Klausen - Leopoldsdorf near Vienna, has been studying with various renowned artists in Austria since 2003. She is a member of the Badener Artists' Association ASPEKT. With her active participation in cultural processes taking place there, she, along with other protagonists, has the effect of conveying the visual arts of the present to a broad public.

In her early creative phase, her works were still characterized as very versatile, ranging from pure abstraction to spontaneous realism. The artist seemed to be searching for herself for a long time. Thus, she felt very familiar with predominantly non-objective representations, whereas today she has largely devoted herself to portrait painting. Her current works show oversized faces with impressive eye play. The face serves as a tableau for the aspects hidden in the facial expression. It is the door or the entrance to the whole human being. The focus of her portraits are always the eyes, which are worked out quite realistically, while the parts of the face seem more abstract, caused by modelling, broad brushstrokes, and thus allow the essential - the play of the eyes - to emerge. Important for the correct understanding are the commenting titles in which inner attitudes between sadness, devotion, enthusiasm, joy and defiance are made visible. Identity is always preserved, even if each painting radiates a certain anonymity. Often they are young, beautiful, "dynamic" women's faces on which the spectacle of life is wonderfully reproduced. The colours in which the faces and backgrounds are kept stand for emotions that are reflected in him under these titles.

Steinacher's great gift is a psychologically well-founded empathy and its bravura translation into the pictorial, especially as the larger-than-life face surpasses reality. In her painting technique, Michaela Steinacher prefers acrylic paints, which dry quickly and can be easily applied in several layers. Through the glaze or also in the impasto application of paint, a certain depth and three-dimensionality is created, which the viewer can penetrate at will and in which his own play and individual communication with the eyes take place in the picture.

Michaela's art should trigger moods and sensitivities, it should touch, express the unspeakable and evoke mental unities in the viewer. Her way of working is characterized by certain orders, which, however, only emerge piece by piece from initial and random chaos. In the process, the colourfully expressive centre opens up into a free space that gives the viewer the opportunity to continue thinking about the pictorial idea himself.

Human expression, dynamics and modification up to abstraction in symbiosis are the central elements of her work, which she  habitually depicts with expressive colours. Michaela Steinacher discovered a significant artistic talent at an early age. She has always appreciated the versatility of her talent. She succeeds in paying significant attention to her artistic abilities. She knows for herself that it is not the neutral, emotionally distanced image, but the subjective and intuitive view of each individual that is decisive for a willful perception of the environment. Her art, she says herself "happens out of everyday life - like snapshots from everyday life". At the same time, her interpretations of a motif exude striking liveliness through a mixture of reduced simplicity and abstract expressionism.

The Klausen artist also pushes abstract painting in numerous projects. She is particularly fascinated by the fact that her pictorial language has little or no reference to any concrete object. For this she engaged in September 2013 in the joint project "abstract : constructivist : three-dimensional", an attempt with painting, graphics, printmaking, photography and object to limit themselves to form and color sounds, intra-pictorial references and contrasts.

Exhibitions (excerpt)

2004: gallery representation Schlossgalerie, Bad Fischau
2004: gallery representation Galerie Mondsee, Austria
2006: gallery representation Galerie Bast - Art, Vienna (AT)
2008: solo exhibition Trivium Investment, Vienna (AT)
2013: joint project of <kunstaspekt> in cooperation with the Academy of Fine Arts, temporary installation
2013: joint exhibition "abstract : constructivist : three-dimensional", Baden (Lower Austria)
2014: solo exhibition "Faces and More", Galerie Steiner, 1. Bezirk Wien (AT)
2014: collective exhibition "STEIN", Schloss Lichtenstein, Niederösterreich
2014: "storyteller", Haus der Kunst, Baden (AT)
2015: group exhibition, Landsteiner Industrieviertelfestival
2015: Annual exhibition <kunstaspekt> at grenzART gallery, Hollabrunn
2016: art fair NEUE ArT16, Dresden
2016: exhibition "paperworks" Galerie im Turm,
2018: solo exhibition Blickfang, Galerie Abstrakte Momente, Dresden (D)
2019: art fair NEUE ArT19, Dresden