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Ashley Hans Scheirl
In & Out of Painting*
Ashley Hans Scheirl’s extensive retrospective at Belvedere 21 spans the 1970s to the present and features new works created specifically for this exhibition.
Since the late 1970s, Ashley Hans Scheirl has developed a remarkably diverse body of work. Their movies, many of which were filmed using the Super8 format, have established the artist as an internationally recognized pioneer in queer-feminist and transgender counterculture. Scheirl’s twenty years of practice in film, performance, and sound production have culminated in two experimental feature films, Rote Ohren fetzen durch Asche / Flaming Ears (1992) and Dandy Dust (1998).
In the 1990s, the focus shifted to painting as a medium for exploring questions of identity through an engagement with art history and the incorporation of various genres. Abstract Expressionism meets Photorealism, dark Romanticism meets Pop Art, and Bad Painting meets Surrealism. Important references include the splatter film genre, Viennese Actionism, Donna Haraway, and the literary pornography of Georges Bataille.
Scheirl views their work as a satirical take on the increasingly surreal nature of the neoliberal economic system, using cutting humor to address the social constructs of gender, sexuality, and power.
Curated by Sergey Harutoonian.
Assistant Curator: Andrea Kopranovic
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Belvedere 21
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Arsenalstraße 1, 1030 Vienna
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Biography
Ashley Hans Scheirl (born Angela Scheirl in Salzburg in 1956) studied restoration at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna.
From 1978 to 1986, they participated in performative music experiments with the groups ‘8 oder 9’ and ‘Ungünstige Vorzeichen.’ More than fifty Super8 short films were produced between 1979 and 1996, 22 in collaboration with Ursula Pürrer in 1984-85.
Between 1981 and 1982, Scheirl lived in New York and worked for Arleen Schloss’s weekly art performance evenings, ‘Wednesdays @ A’s.’ Scheirl lived in London for 16 years, becoming part of a queer and transgender artist scene.
In 2003, they completed a postgraduate M.A. in Fine Arts at the Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design in London. After returning to Vienna in 2005, Scheirl received the Austrian State Scholarship for Fine Arts in 2006, the Art Prize of the City of Vienna in 2012, and the Austrian Prize for Fine Arts from the Federal Chancellery in 2019.
Between 2006 and 2022, Scheirl was a Professor of Contextual Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, and since 2022, holds the position of Senior Professor for Gender & Space at the same institution.
In 2017, Ashley Hans Scheirl participated in the documenta 14 in Athens and Kassel with installations that included paintings and video works.
From 2018 to 2019, Scheirl was an Artist in Residence at the DAAD in Berlin.
In 2022, Scheirl and Jakob Lena Knebl represented Austria at the Venice Biennale.
Other major exhibitions with Jakob Lena Knebl include those at the Lyon Biennale (2020), the Kunsthaus Bregenz (2021), the Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2023), and the Falckenberg Collection/Deichtorhallen, Hamburg (2024).
