Frozen Theatres of Magdalena Frauenberg
Q&A

In works such as ‘Athena’, with the Heart of the Ocean, the necklace from Titanic, and the pose of Donatello's David, you make a direct reference to pop culture and art history. Your figures emerge from myths and sacred representations fused with the present. Katrin Bentele, Director of the Kunstverein Düsseldorf, describes your works as "imbued with symbolic motifs and pop-cultural quotations, which she transfers into the present through precise decisions regarding the materials used".

Could you elaborate more on your engagement with the development of societal and social visual languages?
A few years ago I saw Michelangelo's Roman Pieta. When I stood in front of it I felt a clear sense of beauty—the kind that has to do with truth and not appearance. I realised that what connects me to someone who has seen the same Pieta in the 18th century is the timelessness of emotion. For me, this is the basic core of culture - motifs, symbolism, stories, myths do not pass away, they are only reinterpreted. I explored this in my work Vertigo, for example.
Kim Kardashian declares her body to be the Venus of the 21st century. The image of the woman who is used as a projection screen can be found in Alfred Hitchcock's “Vertigo”, as well as in Pygmalion and Galatea. It's like playing memory cards with traditions. To see when, how and where exactly this same object or story has existed before, which objects and stories now make up our time, and to bring the results close together.

Representations of femininity are a constant thread in your work, with the stiletto being a motif, or object, that appears again and again in various forms of consideration. Do you have a personal connection to this or is the stiletto employed emblematically?
When you devote yourself to objects that are as strongly associated with fetishism and cultural theory as the high heel, you quickly become aware of the absurdity of the content, the power structures and languages that are embedded in the design. Just as the Easter lily is associated with life after death in Christian iconography, the high heel is to be understood as a symbol of the performance of the feminine.

At Philara with 'a sculptors funeral', you staged, together with numerous artists, a group exhibition within the actual group exhibition. You also worked closely with the sculptor David Ruprechter in your most recent woodwork.
How do you understand the perception of individual artists in relation to the collective and the creative process itself - which of course never takes place in an isolated vacuum?
In my experience, cultural work consists almost exclusively of sampling, correcting, reinterpreting and adapting existing objects. Of course, there is usually a lot of personal reworking involved - but basically, art speaks a language whose symbolism we have consciously or unconsciously internalised and which allows us to express ourselves by rearranging it. I try to disclose all names and my sources as much as possible, because on the one hand I like to speak and work in quotations, but I also enjoy talking about process and influences in order to learn from others. This keeps the flow of information moving and also ensures that the appearance of the magician-shaman-artist is not maintained. The phoenix that feeds on and destroys itself, is not the case.

We're talking about individual influences and sampling, so what do your influences look like? Can you tell us about your background and how your experiences inform your work?
I was born in Tyrol and grew up there. What shaped me early on as a child was my exposure to history, legends and the pagan customs that are still practised today. As a child, I wanted to join a local heritage group, but they didn't accept girls, so I consoled myself by watching them, which I still do today. By watching the customs, I learned non-verbal storytelling. And I try to use this system of body language, archetypes, costumes, movement and objects in my work. Additionally, I was influenced by the representations and Christian iconography of the churches and of course the dominance of the mountain, which is still present in 2024. Learning to position myself around the mountain and the permanent presence of a mountain range towering over all the rooftops.

How would you describe the dialogue with, and handling of, spatiality in your work?
Spatiality is the starting point. Gravity, dimensions, architectural conditions, barriers, historical context. You can only come into contact with the works once you have created an awareness of the space, both in terms of content and material - or rather, once there is a space at all. And once the space is provided, to place objects in relation to one another, I imagine lines and arcs of movement to bring the individual works into discourse. For me, it feels like a frozen play; I also try to hint at the future movements of the figures through the tension of the bodies. The verbal space in particular is exciting and probably even more important than the physical space. Just as they say that the devil only wakes when you call him by his name, naming creates the space in which we can spin ideas.

What are you currently feeding your soul with?
I believe movies are the medium that touches me the most. I also make use of the fact that you can travel to completely different places in terms of time and content. Above all, being at the movies is absolute escapism that gives me so much. Aki Kaurismäki, Chantal Akerman, Thomas Arslan, Carl Theodor Dreyer, there are so many great names to whom you can give your full attention and receive sensitivity and truth in return. But of course there is also music, Kali Malone or Sarah Davachi, incredibly great composers for whom exactly the same applies as for the filmmakers already mentioned.