Michaela Moscouw

The work of Austrian artist Michaela Moscouw, created since the early 1980s, is considered to be unaffected by contemporary trends and radically independent. Looking at the parts of her oeuvre held in the FOTOHOF>ARCHIV, a surprising and, from a conservationist’s point of view, peculiar mixture becomes apparent. The group of works “Aus der präparierten Dunkelkammer” (From the Prepared Darkroom, 2016), created during a working stay in Salzburg, was initially incorporated into the FOTOHOF>ARCHIV collection, but was later reclaimed by the artist for further processing. Together with other parts of her photographic work, it was transformed into so-called “Pizzas” (2019). On these flat worlds, each 160 cm in diameter, Michaela Moscouw’s works from the past three to four decades meet illustrations from the publication “Wien und ein Blick in die Alpengaue” (Vienna and a View of the Alpine Meadows, 1941). The collaging, gluing, mixing, and superimposing of the images opens a wide field of provocative political, perhaps sarcastic, but certainly completely ambiguous interpretations. Pictorial upheavals take place in the paper dough of the pizza, driven not by a desire for clear statements. Rather, their enormous energy seems to stem from a process of condensation, released by the artist’s maltreating approach to her images.