Marianne Lang

In 2012 the ALBERTINA Museum began to ask artists to conceive interventions on and in the museum, in the Habsburg State Rooms, and relating to its collections.

Marianne Lang (born in Graz in 1979) explores spaces by drawing. She cautiously intervenes in the existing architecture by interweaving its different structures ‒ inside and outside, private and public sphere ‒ and thus draws attention to their peculiarities.

In her intervention developed for the ALBERTINA Museum, the artist dedicates herself to climbing plants, which are frequently used for façade greening. Climbers with tendrils or clinging roots attach themselves to vertical surfaces. The original architecture vanishes and is replaced by living matter through this mode of greening.

It is this strategy which Marianne Lang deals with in her wall installation by transferring the rampant proliferation into the interior of the Palais. The outlines and shadings of climbers are scraped into the wall plaster as “shade-loving plants” in sgraffito technique. As clinging roots penetrate the upper layer of the wall, the artist’s approach afflicts the surface, gradually disintegrates it, and exposes the layers behind. Older coatings can suddenly be made out and come to the fore, defining the appearance of the wall drawing.