Friedl Kubelka (b. 1946 in London), who has called herself Friedl vom Gröller as a filmmaker since 2009, lives and works in Vienna and Paris. For more than five decades, she has been uncompromisingly engaging with all aspects of human existence in her transmedia practice. She focuses on psychological states in relation to external conditions, intrapersonal relationships and emotional and moral marginal zones. She approaches them with analytical acuity, empathy, humor and great openness and deliberately employs the qualities of various media to do so.
Stella Rollig, Director General of Belvedere: With this exhibition, we are increasing the visibility of a little-known group of works that adds crucial depth to the work of Friedl Kubelka / vom Gröller. The gouaches provide immediate, personal access to Kubelka /vom Gröller’s artistic attitude and expand our understanding of the extraordinary complexity of her oeuvres.
Curator Stefanie Reisinger: Kubelka / vom Gröller deliberately oscillates in her work between conceptual, intellectual and emotional means of expression without losing her interest in human existence and associated curiosity. Because of its immediacy and her contemplative approach in a conscious mode of abstract reproduction, her painting opens freedoms in the layering of memory, presence and idea. As in all her media and in her life, here too she is merciless, resistive and challenging.
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
Friedl Kubelka / vom Gröller’s gouaches and drawings, of which she has made around 150 thus far, occupy a special place in her oeuvre. Formally, they are clearly distinct from her black-and-white films and analog photographs: in intense color and rich detail, they unfold scenically condensed pictorial spaces in which different worlds of events overlap. Stylistically, they pay homage to the history of art – from the proto-Renaissance by way of Gustav Klimt and the Fantastic Realists to Frida Kahlo and Friedensreich Hundertwasser.
Her small-format works on paper address in surprisingly colorful and intimate ways such themes as life, death, love, lust, jealousy, isolation, joy and exuberance. Private events, desires, crises and dreams are translated into narrative pictorial structures in which humor and the grotesque stand alongside empathy and analytical precision.
Kubelka / vom Gröller also explores her interest in open, nonlinear narrative forms in a group of films, albeit in different forms because of the requirements of that medium. Despite their formal differences, a close thematic relationship results between the moving images and the works on paper that is explored in this exhibition. Her experimental, narrative manner is remarkable and is expressed in a diary-like form in her works on paper in particular and reveals a quality in the films that has little appreciated until now.
Co-Curator Dietmar Schwärzler: Fragmented plot arcs, contradictory angles of view and ambiguous situations characterize both her painted and moving images. Slapstick-like moments stand next to existential questions, dream logics next to analytical postulates.
The fulcrum of Kubelka / vom Gröller’s oeuvre since 1969 has been her studio on Gartengasse, which has also served as a schoolroom and residence at times. After training to be a psychotherapist and group analyst (1988–96), Kubelka / vom Gröller had her sessions here and in 1990 founded the Schule für künstlerische Photographie (School for Artistic Photography) and the Schule für unabhängigen Film (School for Independent Film) in 2006. The architecture of the exhibition was developed based on her studio and provides an atmospheric frame for its chronological sequence.
The Belvedere is the only museum in the world with a gouache by Friedl Kubelka in its collection: Neuffers Zimmer (Neuffer’s Room) (1974) is one of the artist’s earliest paintings. Its title refers to her formative exchange with Hans Neuffer, who in the early 1970s encouraged Kubelka to draw and paint in parallel with her first photographs and films.
