Birgit Graschopf

At irregular intervals, the ALBERTINA Museum invites artists to respond to the venue of the palace, the museum, and the Habsburg staterooms in specially conceived interventions.

For the fourth intervention in this series, Birgit Graschopf creates three photographic exposures directly on the museum walls based on works from the ALBERTINA Museum‘s photographic collection. The artist selected three photographs from the 1910s and 1920s that focus on women and strategies in staging of the female nude, movement, and  theater photography of the time. Her work is thus also reminiscent of prominent photographers of early-twentieth-century Vienna such as Madame D’Ora and Rudolf Koppitz.

Birgit Graschopf‘s installations consistently interact with the space, working with the given situation and elements. The postures and poses of the figures in the wall exposures correspond with the specific spatial context. For instance, the lighting in the exposure complements the actual lighting conditions in the room or a real flight of stairs is extended in the depiction. The wall exposure turns the wall itself into a pictorial surface, virtually melding the selected photograph with the room to produce a sort of photographic fresco.