Markus Proschek Markus Proschek

MARKUS PROSCHEK / PATT

When is painting art and for what reasons? This question may well indicate a possible access to the work of Markus Proschek. At first, some of us may feel uncomfortable looking at these pictures. Without having ever seen the original motifs, we immediately know whose spirit children they are.
The apparently stereotypically presented naked bodies do not hang in the showrooms of museums and collections: they shyly fill depots and cellars. Nevertheless, names like Thorak and Ziegler come to mind. Painters that we associate with these motifs. “Artists” who, in the service of National Socialism, developed and presented programmatic aesthetic concepts. In a peculiar way, these still maintain a preconscious presence in our collective image memory. The apparent harmlessness of the subjects - nudes in frozen positions are shown again and again - and the formulaic nature of the motifs were probably the reason for classifying these creative solutions as bad painting or sculpture. This seemed to have defused their history of impact.
But perhaps these works are not as harmless as they seem from their aesthetic evaluation. Do they perhaps represent one aspect of the human extermination of National Socialism - the image of the new human being "bred"?

Markus Proschek, this year's main prize winner, impresses with monumental paintings that are characterized by a precise description. This mimetic moment, however, does not show itself in a direct translation of reality, but in an exciting arrangement of the picture motifs. Quotes from art history are inscribed in rooms that are reminiscent of fascist architecture, or vice versa: sculptures with the schematized features of the ideologized body are placed in current environments. Florian Steininger Bank Austria Art Forum

Markus Proschek questions these relics of our still suppressed “history of the senses”. He paints these motifs again using an elaborate glaze technique. But he is well aware of the danger of this evocation of the repressed. How easily this “follow-up” can end in an affirmation. The artist circumvents this by using the imagery of the
“Role models” with quotations from hyper-realism and installation breaks. This break through a motivic collage shows the rift between program art and free design in a work structure. Markus Proschek thus makes an illuminating contribution to the question of the aesthetic structure of fascism. Boris Manner, curator, Vienna.

MARKUS PROSCHEK

1981 born in Schwarzach im Pongau, Salzburg
2001 studied painting, University of Applied Arts, Vienna
2003 Assistant at Milan Knizak, Int. Summer Academy for Fine Arts, Salzburg
2004 Assistant to Jacobo Borges, Int. Summer Academy for Fine Arts, Salzburg
2004 becomes a member of the association "Kunstwerft"
2008 diploma
Lives and works in Vienna

Awards, grants

2008 Anton Faistauer Prize 2008, Traklhaus Salzburg
2007 Emanuel and Sofie Fohn scholarship

Exhibition selection

2008 
Elements of Light, Art Athina-Hellenic American 
Union, Athen | 7parallel7 MOYA, Wien, MNAC Galeria Etaj
3/4, Bukarest | Vampyr, Intervention in der 
Slg.Esterhazy, Burg Forchtenstein

2007 
Internat. Projekt Karfiol-Traditionen und Rituale,
Kunsthalle Project Space, Wien | Long time not seen
MUSA, Museum auf Abruf, Wien | Ship of fools,
Kunstpavillon Innsbruck | In Touch, Qingdao Art Museum,
China | La Nave Dei Folli, Studio Angeletti, Rom

2006 
Immenkönig, Alte Schmiede, Artothek der Stadt WieN
The Essence06, Museum für angewandte Kunst, Wien
Das ist doch kein Porno, Galerie Lisi Hämmerle, Bregenz
Artist in Residence, Linhart Foundation, Prag

2005
Malstrom, Universität für angewandte Kunst, Wien

2004
Malerei 04, Universität für angewandte Kunst, Wien
Sirenen im Keller, Werftgalerie, Wien

2003 
The Essence, 20er-Haus, Wien | Wienroulette 1/12, Hallein
Haut, Galerie im Alcatraz | Kooperation mit A. Sandbichler,
Soho in Ottakting, Wien

2002 
Segmente, Universität für angewandte Kunst,
Heiligenkreuzerhof, Wien