MARIA MIESENBERGER

SELECTED WORKS
SELECTED PRESS
PUBLICATIONS

Anna Bohman Gallery has the great pleasure to start the spring season with Maria Miesenberger’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. The exhibition Unfold descends in the traces of time and its expanse. It consists of works revolving around love and a constant and continuing loss, as if pleated; similar to when lack appear at the same time as desire. Whether the works’ boundaries to the surrounding world are traced, pleated or filled to the brim, they seem to invent eternity with the help of finality.

The relation between the past and the present has always characterized Miesenberger’s artistry. However, in Unfold the order between cause and effect has been reversed, as if to disrupt the fashion in which Miesenberger’s art has previously been perceived. To study the works is to find oneself at an intersection of time, a narrow gap between finality and infinity, like standing in one’s own shadow.

Miesenberger does not romanticize the materials she is working with. In contrast to the soft and transitory materials of her early works, Miesenberger now makes use of materials that are permanent. Even though the bodies and brains in Unfold are permeable and perishable, the choice of material vouches for a persistence. The execution, as well as the time is takes to give the figures their shape, are part of the overall experience. A humanity enclosed in matter so rigid, the paradox immediately lead thoughts to the soft human body, your senses are sharpened and you can hear your own heart beating. Miesenberger does not sentimentalize her course of action either, she merely releases it from its matter. The ideas are unshackled in a novel direction through the inflated figures to the more abstract forms, the works are liberated in a new way.

The first part of Unfold shows Miesenberger’s textile work Memory Unfold (Crossing Over). This work is created in collaboration with Märta Måås-Fjätterström AB. Human inability to prevent history from repeating itself is expressed through black crosses woven in the human brain´s thick grey-scale. The work is presented together with the sculptures Unfold, which with their wavy, pleated surfaces resemble a hand fan. Their shining and repetitive movements appear to defy opposition and enter negotiation with the notion of limitation.

In the second part of the exhibition, sculptures with comparably dark surfaces are found. In a changing darkness, the pieces Reflection on the Presence of Time / Decay reflect the surroundings and each other. Hereby, a process is created in which the polished, convex and concave surfaces have undergone changes. They have darkened in full bloom, embraced by decay.

In the opening part the three sculptures Leap of Faith (Getting Over) are towering in arrested moments above the fourth sculpture (Handing Over) seemingly involved in a dialogue of courage and trust. Without giving way to the pain, which is a given element in any state of transition, a hope of change unfolds throughout the exhibition.

MARIA MIESENBERGER Born in 1965 in Lund, she now lives and works in Stockholm. She studied at Konstfack, Stockholm (1991-95) and at Parsons School of Design, New York (1995-96). Between 1995-2003 she lived and worked in New York. Maria Miesenberger has had some 50 solo shows in Europa and in the US, some of which are; Half an Angel, Carl Eldhs Ateljémuseum (2017), Inside and Out - Where Now Meets Then, Läckö slott, Lidköping (2016), Moment: Maria Miesenberger/Lars Norén, Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2014) and Presence of Time, Strandverket, Marstrand (2013), among others. She has participated in numerous group show such as Next: Utopia, Norrköpings konstmuseum (2016), Asylum - när modet flirtar med konsten, Kulturhuset Stadsteatern, Stockholm (2015), Det synliga, Artipelag, Värmdö (2014), Helvete!, Liljevalchs, Stockholm (2011) and Sverige/Schweden, BildMuseet Umeå (2009), Skisser, Museum of Artistic Process and Public Art, Lund (2008). Miesenberger has previously collaborated in Sweden with Lars Bohman Gallery, (1995-2016) and Galleri Andersson/Sandström (2017-2018) among others.

Half an Angel (2001), the 8-meter-high sculpture at Telenor's head office in Oslo is one of Miesenberger's many public works, others include Moment in Motion at Enskedegård subway station in Stockholm (2014), Change of Direction (2016), Restad Gård, Vänersborg and currently installed at Artipelag, Värmdö, Reflection on the Presence of Time (2016), Norrköping, Hoppet,Övre Vasastaden(2018), Linköping and Möjligheternas Portal (2018) - a memorial for Ebba Ramsey's park in Jönköping.

Miesenberger is currently working on several public commissions; Forced to a Change for Nya Tingstorget in Alby, Botkyrka and a memorial for the resistance against the Nazi regime during the Second World War for Norrköping/Botrygg.

Miesenberger is represented in the collection of The Bonnier Group, Moderna Museet Stockholm, Malmö Konstmuseum and Norrköpings Konstmusum, as well as The Henry Buhl Collection, US. Miesenberger has received numerous awards and grants such as the 2011 Swedish Photobook Prize for the book Sverige/Schweden, The Stockholms City Honorary Award in Art 2015 and she has twice been the recipient of the Swedish Arts Grants Committee's five-year work grant.

Maria Miesenberger is also of current interest with her participation in the exhibition Signature Women at Artipelag, Värmdö, 8 March - 27 September 2020.

Photography: Mathias Johansson