Ingrid Wiener – Simply making and doing

Today, at the age of eighty-three, the artist Ingrid Wiener looks back on a diverse oeuvre: from woven works and drawings by way of photographs and films to performances as a singer and as a cook. Her tapestries, dream drawings and correspondence in this exhibition reveal continuous self-observation as an artist. Ingrid Wiener’s practice of weaving conveys not only a motif but also her perception of it. The subjects of her tapestries range from the X-ray view into her own body through semiotics of programming and codes to situations from the kitchen and from daily life. Her works allows us to reflect on Wiener’s view of the allegedly ordinary and to emerge ourselves in her ex-change of ideas with others. Between personal notes, intuitive impulses and philosophical analyses, the combination of art and life in Ingrid Wiener’s work becomes a poetic experience.

Inspired by the early actions of the Wiener Gruppe (Vienna Group) in the 1950s, Ingrid Wiener (then still Schuppan) studied at the Textilfachschule (Technical College for Textiles) in Vienna. Her enduring friendship and collaboration with the artist who would later be known as VALIE EXPORT began there. Their first collaborative works with textiles were marked by their cooperation with artist friends such as Friedensreich Hundertwasser and Dieter Roth, before Wiener used the medium in her individual way. The exchange with her husband—the writer and theorist Oswald Wiener—and with her large circle of friends was a constant component of her broad oeuvre and in the many places she lived: from Vienna by way of Berlin and Dawson City, Canada, and many travels, to the current centre of her life in Kapfenstein in the Steiermark in Austria.

The exhibition is coproduced with Phileas - The Austrian Office for Contemporary Art

Supported by the austrian Federal Ministry of Housing, Arts, Culture, Media and Sport