The Xippas gallery is pleased to present, for the first time in its Parisian space, a solo show of the Austrian artist Marina Faust. The exhibition will bring together, on the two floors of the gallery, the series of portraits Faces, as well as her Rolling Stools and Traveling Chairs.
With the Faces series, Marina Faust develops portraits originating from a children’s game supposed to create perfect beings. The artist diverts the intention of the game, and the resulting creatures or “instantaneous states of mind,” challenge our perception of painting, from cubism to trompe-l’oeil. The technique of pigment print on semi-transparent silk tissue paper generates a complexity between collage, photography, painting and drawing, and merge both analog and digital elements. As the artist says, “My collages are the results of experiments with and around photography. I tear, destroy and reconstruct. Accidents govern the method. In a tradition of self-portrait, a discipline I have practiced my whole life, one could see these collages as self-portraits, but also simply as portraits of my contemporaries.”
“Despite their severe deconstruction, and probably also because of it, Marina Faust’s portraits each have a unique identity and achieve the quality of a ‘character’ without which a portrait is nothing much.” (1)
In 2003, Marina Faust created her first Traveling Chairs for her film Gallerande. Vintage chairs were transformed and equipped with stabilizing structures of multiple wheels for the traveling shots. New groups of Traveling Chairs today are used to scroll through exhibition spaces. People can push each other which creates a special bond between the two individuals and offers a different perception of time and view on the surrounding world. For the exhibition, Marina Faust creates a long line of portraits from her Faces series to be contemplated from the seated perspective on a Traveling Chair: « The Traveling Chairs come full circle, returning to their original purpose ».
The Rolling Stools come from boudoir vintage stools and are also stabilized and elevated with multiple industrial wheel structures. Besides the fact to sit on them they can be seen as utopian creatures or dystopian pets.
(1) Eric Troncy, It’s only you, Le Consortium, Dijon, 2017
Marina Faust was born in 1950 in Vienna, Austria, where she lives and works.
She began her artistic career as a photo-reporter in Vienna. Her first exhibitions took place at Galerie Agathe Gaillard in Paris in the 1980s. In 1995, she expanded her artistic practice onto other disciplines such as video, objects, installations and collages.In 2019 Marina Faust received the Otto Breicha Award for Artistic Photography in Austria, which led to a solo exhibition at the Museum der Moderne, Salzburg in 2020.
Her work will be included in “The Echo of Picasso” exhibition, curated by Eric Troncy, at the Picasso Museum, Malaga, Spain, from October 3, 2023. It has also been shown at Belvedere Museum, Vienne (2023), Le Consortium, Dijon (2017), GIANNI MANHATTAN, Vienna (2022, 2018), Mumok , Vienna (2018), Belvedere21, Vienna (2017), Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2015, 2014, 2013, 2011), Xippas Geneva (2020), the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris (2018), Centre Pompidou Metz (2014), Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid (2013), Maison Martin Margiela project space, Tokyo, Japan (2007).
