Birgit Pleschberger Birgit Pleschberger

BIRGIT PLESCHBERGER - WELCOME TO PARADISE

Birgit Pleschberger shows in her exhibition with the title “welcome to paradise” a series of large-format drawings from the series “Paradies” composed of several individual parts to act. On the one hand, the figures shown clearly have human traits, but their liveliness is called into question by the fact that they are hanging on threads like marionettes and their bodies are composed of individual doll members.
The mood that the pictures convey fluctuates. Often cheerful playfulness and almost paradisiacal carelessness seem to predominate, then again a gloomy eeriness pushes itself into the foreground and forces the scenes almost into the grotesque. The viewer is consciously torn between more or less diffuse feelings and the question arises whether the depicted scenes can really represent paradise - as implied in the title - or whether a form of paradise is even possible.

Birgit Pleschberger's artistic work encompasses a wide variety of media - from drawing and graphics to painting to objects, installations and new media. One of the hallmarks of their work is that they generally do not commit themselves to a certain medium and thus do not want to restrict themselves - first the idea, the content, and then the appropriate means to implement it are found. The questions that the artist asks herself in her work are often deeply human, also existential - even if this is not always obvious to the viewer at first glance. She uses a visual language which often cannot be translated directly, but which stimulates through its emotional immediacy.

Birgit Pleschberger's drawings suggest a world in which reality and play mix. The figures she represents embody something like the shadows of the individual persons, concrete and yet only hinted at. In this way, the viewer poses questions in a subtle way that can only arise from himself. "Let's play a game - guess what am I thinking of?"
And yet, the people who exist in this childlike world are dominated by adult rules. The characters transform into people and the people in turn escape their own identity.
"Tell me who is pulling the strings?"
Marie-Christine Laurel
Birgit Pleschberger's drawn puppets testify to power, violence and injury. The hinged figures are subject to physical limitations, similar to a marionette. Mag. Florian Steininger, curator of Ba-Ca Kunstforum, Vienna

Birgit Pleschberger's drawings from the Paradies series, despite their title and the mostly cheerful situations they depict, are slowly but constantly beginning to worry us. They show absolutely paradisiacal conditions: laughing, defiant but satisfied, sometimes thoughtful faces of young people who devote themselves to play, idleness, cheerfulness and relaxing together. You still seem to be able to indulge in a childlike light-heartedness that we so often miss and which, precisely for this reason, lets us glorify childhood as a paradisiacal state ...

But then there is sudden discomfort. The young people - friends and acquaintances of the artist, as well as herself - are not alive in spite of their liveliness, because they are puppets, marionettes, who hold their threads, which hold them in place and thus also their dependence on whoever is Threads hold, seem unaware. That's why we do it: we can't so easily hide the joints, screws, nails, limbs and, above all, threads that become visible. The puppets appear cheerful, downright happy in their actions; one gets the impression that paradise is only open to them because they are puppets, so they are indifferent to their dependencies on threads and gravity, are simply not aware of them and therefore do not waste any thought on it and focus on the happy, ( almost) perfect moment to fully indulge ...
And yet there is also a moment of the uncanny that the marionette and the doll as such probably bring with it again and again and that has fascinated us and visual artists over generations in the marionette / doll: its position between inanimate objects provided with all too human features and yet somehow animated subject who on the one hand self-satisfied and apparently happy is not aware of its dependencies, but constantly confronts us as viewers with them and on the other hand also has a certain potential for resistance.
Stefanie Grünangerl

BIRGIT PLESCHBERGER

Born 1978 in Villach
1997-03 studies at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg with Prof. Ruedi Arnold
1999 scholarship at the summer academy Salzburg / class Zhou Brothers
2002 “artists in recidence” grant, Bildungshaus St. Virgil
2002 studio of the state of Salzburg for Croatia
2003/04 Slavi Soucek work grant from the State of Salzburg
2004 Atelier of the State of Salzburg for Budapest
2004 art purchase by the state of Salzburg
2006 Atelier of the State of Salzburg for Paris
2006 Art purchases by the State of Carinthia and the Federal Chancellery
Lives and works in Salzburg

> Birgit Pleschberger


Exhibitions (selection)

2008  
Jeune Création Européenne; Art Exhibition Hall, Litauen u.Traklhaus, Salzburg,
Welcome to Paradis, Strabag Artlounge

2007 
Hundsleben; Galerie Eboran, Salzburg
Waiting for something to explode; Café Cult, Salzburger Kunstverein
Nuit écarlate; Théatre de Montrouge, Montrouge 
Tumbleweed; MuseAV Nizza 
Sculpture sur prose; Galerie Simeza, Bukarest
RaumFreiheit; Hallein Salzburg
Blickwechsel n°3; Museum Moderner Kunst Kärnten
Waiting for something to explode; Café Cult im Salzburger Künstlerhaus
Ausstellung Landesankäufe Salzburg; Traklhaus, Salzburg (Gruppenaust.)

2006  
Galerie Amorthaus, Berchtesgaden (Gruppenaust.)
Zwischendurch; Salzburger Kunstverein (Gruppenaust.)
Multiplier, Space 1; im Offspace „Whiteclub“, Salzburg (Gruppenaust.)
Teilnahme an der Aktion: Parapluies dans la ville; Centre Pompidou, Paris
Parapluies dans la ville; Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles, Paris (Gruppenaust.)

2005  
Galerie „Amorthaus“, Berchtesgaden
Salzburger Kunstverein (Gruppenaust.)

2004  
In the studio; Ausstellung im Rahmen des Auslandsatelieraufenthalts,      Budapest
Studio im Traklhaus,  Salzburg
Galerie der KHG, Salzburg

2003  
Galerie alcatraz, Hallein

2002  
Salzburger Kunstverein (Gruppenaust.)
St. Virgil, Salzburg

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