#AccidentalRenaissancePics: Xenia Hausner's Performative Paintings at Patricia Low Contemporary
Xenia (Babyboomer, Austrian) plays with drama of religious dimensions in her suspense-filled paintings. Nods to Venice included.
Xenia presents 10 works at the Venice location of Patricia Low Contemporary, just in time for the inauguration of the 60th International Art Exhibition (aka the Venice Biennale). Eventhough the above mentioned internet phenomenon refers to the Renaissance, the photographs tagged are closer to Baroque. And, in an unexpected way, Xenia’s paintings fit right into this internet niche because of one element: Theatricality.
Staged Surrealism
Although nothing spectacular happens in these paintings, they feel out of this world. And it’s not because of weird objects or phantastical surroundings. The paintings feel surreal because of the way the subjects behave. The figures move in unusual, dramatic gestures.
Double Dip (2024) is painted in an unconventional double elipse format. A woman twists her neck towards the observer and away from the people standing behind a railing, trying to pull her up. Or is she desperately trying to climb to their side as they push her hands away? Is their touch on her a gesture of help or rejection? I think I see empathy in the face of the man in the green suit. And gentleness in the careful hands of the person in the pink trenchcoat, holding the head of the possibly fainting woman.
Even when the movements are fluid and soft, the brushstrokes are rather edgy and hard. The vein across the rough hand on the left is a sharp line while the stretched fingers of the child in the lower right corner are rather cloudy dabs. Xenia often keeps paint seperate as blue and pink patches on beige skin.
Irritating Intimacy
Their gestures might also be unexpected ones. Take the 160 x 250 cm large painting Stranger Things (2022). The scene unfolds below. The hem of a blue stage curtain touches the turquoise floor. A Black woman performs a song, undeterred by the two white women behind her. Hasn’t she noticed them? The microphone in the singer’s hand suggests a retro timeframe, while the other two women look oddly specifically Millenial (I’m serious, they’re dressed like every Millenial person working in a creative field, and I’ve seen plenty of them). The tension is hightened by one of them lifting the other’s shirt as the latter holds on to the other’s elbow. As if Xenia painted a performance and not a real incident.
Xenia rarely allows eye contact. Actually, she rarely shows the eyes at all. The figures are most often twisted and turned away or their eyes are closed anyways. Pieta (2024) is one exception of a figure reciprocating the eye contact. What will happen if we lock our gaze?
To my advanced art people, I’d say that Xenia paints the way Joanna Piotrowska (Millenial, Polish) approaches photography. Joanna captures people in moments of vulnerability that can feel safe or rather like being at the mercy of the other. Both artists use fragmented scenes, centering body parts instead of showing the whole figure.
Intimacy is weirdly mixed with something morbid. A criminologist (I hope) examines the embracing corpses of two women in Zone A (2024). As I looked closely, It hit me: BOOM! I frantically scrolled throough my saved posts on Instagram and finally found them. Franz Eisenhut’s Before Execution (1890) and Saint George Hare’s The Victory of Faith (1891). Two paintings of nude women embracing, a theme closely examined by queer art history.1
The unusually formed paintings paired with the saintly expressions of the people depicted in them give off a very churchy atmosphere, at least fitting to the decorative wall and ceiling paintings of Venetian Palazzi. Somehow, be it intended or not, I see Venice all around. I see it in the packed boat of Deep Water (2024), I believe to recognize a Vaporetto stop in For Woman Only (2023). And the sea-themed sculptures are in my face reminding me I’m in Venice.
Figuring out sculpture
Apart from painting, Xenia shows two brand-new sculptures. And, well… Listen. It’s not that they aren’t giving. They are giving. They are giving cheap.
Atemluft [A Breath of Air] (2024) is a polished aluminium bust of a woman wrestling for air as she balances a rusty scuba diving air tank on her forehead and nose. So… air pollution. I know. And?
Spill (2024) is a mixed media figure of a white blank woman in a blazer (OK, Girlboss?) gazing into the distance as a bird drenched in a black liquid sits on her head. I understand that it’s supposed to be crude oil, one of the main pollutants of the ocean. As cynical as it might be, this isn’t shocking. I remember the photograph of a pelican unable to fly because its wings are covered in oil. It shrieks for help, eyes wide open. Now THAT’S horror and helplessness. If Xenia’s tries to elicit a similar response, it doesn’t work for two reasons.
First, because you can’t place a bird on a human head, show that figure in Venice and not expect people to think of birds shitting on unsuspecting tourists (I am people). I will admit, it MIGHT be a humurous nod to the birds resting on the white sculptures of public buildings and churches, indifferent to their history and heritage. Second, it’s the way this female figure is holding on to a lifebuoy. She isn’t desperately grabbing it like she is drowing. Much rather, she peeks out as if it was a window. Kind of like a Looney Tunes character winking one last time before the circle closes, The End.
Very straightforward and in-your-face. Like okay, we get it. Climate change. Environmental pollution. Very, very bad. And yet, there is absolutely no reason to package this fact into an artwork that doesn’t convey any truth beyond. A good artwork shouldn’t be easily replaced by any other form. Spill doesn’t make climate change more immediate for me. Instead, its absurdity alienates me. Respectfully (but actually not too much), those exactly the type of works I’d expect to see at Art Karlsruhe…
You can try searching for Netflix references in Xenia Hausner: Stranger Things, through June 9, 2024, at Patricia Low Contemporary, Venice.
Patricia Low Contemporary
Dorsoduro 2793
Venice
Website: patricialow.com
Instagram: @patricialowcontemporary @studio_xenia_hausner
The preview is survived, the Biennale is finally open to the public. I’m using the time to see the National Pavilions and Collateral Events now. There is so much in store, subscribe to not miss out! Thank you for reading these reviews. You can support my writing by liking, commenting, and sharing with friends.
See you soon!!!
Jennifer
The Gen Z Art Critic
Kobena Mercer linked such depictions to lesbian sensuality in "5. Avid Iconographies: Isaac Julien". Travel & See: Black Diasporic Art Practices Since the 1980s. Durham: Duke University Press 2016. p. 138. Available on Google Books.