Susanne Hornbostel

address/ mobile phone/ homepage/ email
Mengergasse 62/2/3 A-1210 Vienna AUSTRIA
studio: Mengergasse 62/2/3 A-1210 Vienna
mobile: +43 699 11 20 24 91
http://www.suehornbostel.com
office@suehornbostel.com
susanne.hornbostel@chello.at

Susanne Hornbostel

'Companions Through a Flowing World'

The things we perceive most often in an urban setting are the backs of other people. In modern working life, streets and square are merely zones of transit linking places. The subject of capitalism has always been a traveler. Encounters with strangers are often reduced to muttering 'Get out of my way!' at them. But in fact, we would love to be holiday-makers: Slowing down to a leisurely pace, lifting our heads to see details we have never seen before. Artists and tourists share a heightened sense of receptiveness. They can see things in a different light, they discover colors in the gray wallpaper of normality. The longing to be elsewhere also stands for a wish for living more in the here and now and for a sensitivity enabling us to take in new impressions. However, the tourist's gaze also reduces the complexity of the world, breaking the unknown down into easily consumable morsels. In her new paintings, Susanne Hornbostel succeeds in addressing both aspects.

The artist records fleeting moments in an urban environment. In her paintings, highly schematic figures move through similarly abstract architecture. The homogeneous, two-dimensional representation is equally reminiscent of comic strips and their predecessors, Japanese woodcuts. The woodblock prints of motifs from the entertainment quarters of Tokyo, showing actors and concubines, were called 'pictures of a flowing world'. This poetic paraphrase is also an excellent way of describing Hornbostel's art: her young protagonists pass by like appearances which move thanks to the flow of global dynamics. The artist's motifs are almost entirely limited to views of backs or details, she denies the figures individuality. She is interested in a collective phenomenon, the depiction of a mobile mass society. This is what distinguishes her work from that of the US painter Alex Katz, whose works are similar to hers in terms of form as he produces a deliberately superficial record of the 'leisure class' of his milieu. Hornbostel creates an image of her generation, the first to be captured by the maelstrom of data flows, experiencing a world of infinite availability.

The artist sympathizes with these modern nomads, we can tell from the bright pastel shades. The beholder is literally touched by the material she chose to paint on in her most recent series of works, foam rubber. The object-like paintings are haptic challenges: how soft are they, how deeply does the paint seep in? By means of the springy surrogate canvas Hornbostel creates a sense of proximity. When the virtual world turns us into 'visitors' of an intangible universe of information, our need for physical contact will grow all the more. This is corroborated by the popularity of contemporary 'touch design', so accommodating to its users by virtue of pleasant surface qualities. The original color of the inexpensive material is used in a sophisticated way in the paintings as some spots are left unpainted. The lightness and porosity of the foam conforms with the ephemeral subject, defying the drive to conserve of art history. Art on foam rubber can also be read as an ironic and feminist comment: painted material one would normally find in cushions replacing the white canvas with its masculine-heroic connotations stands for 'feminine' textile art.

The faceless figures in Hornbostel's paintings have been compared to avatars, virtual characters in cyberspace. The artist herself considers them to be 'friendly hyper-tourists' to whom loose ties to many places do not necessarily mean homelessness. Our gazes following the wandering figures, we project fantasies onto their schematic bodies. Traveling as a permanent state is imperceptibly losing the horror of the odyssey.

Text by Nicole Scheyerer
Translated by Elisabeh Frank-Grossebner

'passers-by'

Susanne Hornbostel

Press Release

Susanne Hornbostel paints portraits of anonymous passers-by in urban scenarios. The artist calls this themed series of paintings 'passers-by'. Her focus is on people who are apparently not in a hurry, wandering about and being absorbed in their own activities and thoughts. The flaneurs are roaming the city of Vienna. This place could, however, be switched for any other place, as the anonymity of the represented characters is in deliberate conformity with the anonymity of the place.

The characters are mostly depicted from behind, their charted range of motion appears to leave the painting and go on unto distant horizons. They are quasi-nomads in these paintings, there appears to be no real reason for them to stay. In line with this perspective it is also impossible to discern individual faces. The characters move about in an unreal setting, in an over-emphasized sphere of light. As in overexposed photos, surfaces and shades are reduced to contours and silhouettes. Often, characters appear as mere lines. There is an ephemeral and surreal, almost dream-like element in this encounter between a real-life city scenario and the artist's gaze. The fleeting atmosphere of the paintings is mainly expressed through pastel color schemes, which vary from soft and warm tones to cold and coolish tones. The colors are designed to match the ephemeral note and are often just hinted at in the background composition of the painting. There is a melancholic element suggested by the hazy contours of the passers-by in the big city, and they make us think about life and death and where we are headed on our earthly journey.

'This cityscape with its overexposed light scheme together with the faceless passers-by expresses my emotion with regard to the fleeting nature of the moment. Passers-by for me are a way to look for that which lasts, which I want to portray through the things that vanish so fast.'
(Susanne Hornbostel)

This glimpse of a series of unspectacular everyday moments may prompt us to give more attention to living without reserve and conditions and to appreciate moments of genuine joy in a hectic world.

Text by Dr Elisabeth Priedl
Translated by Mag Elisabeth Frank-Großebner