FRANCE – PARIS 2024
Review by curator Marta Lock
Galerie THUILLIER
6.12. – 19.12.2024
ATLANTE DELL’ARTE CONTEMPORANEA 2023/24
Entry in the Edition 2023/24,
Officially presented in May 2024 in Florence and in the Metropolitan Museum, New York
Isolde Mischkot currently resides in Vienna, the center of propulsion for her art: in the capital, the main exhibition events of which she has been the protagonist have been held, leading her to national recognition. She paints and uses the technique of collage alternatively or in combination. The operational process is particularly permeated by two sensations that the author declares as dominant: lightness and freedom. Abandoning oneself to these emotions is the key to her creative activity, which is not based on an idea, on a pre-established structure but finds in its own making the path that responds to the momentary inspiration.
She prefers the use of acrylics. She spreads them through the use of spatulas or she modulates them in sprays and drippings, even arriving at spreading them with her hands. It is an operational variety that results in a continuous succession and relaunching of ever-new visual stimuli. The supports are also of different natures: the wooden board or paper alternates with the canvas. Freedom moves with coherence in every creative step, from the tools to the final works.
Among them, there is a group of works that delve into the legacy of a gestural informality and that may recall the research of Georges Mathieu. But our artist simultaneously reaches opposite poles, completely internal to a poetic and joyous narrative. This is the case with „Lemons“ (2016): devoid of any expressionistic character and simplified in their profiles, the fruits are endowed with an immediate and joyful communicative force.
Between these two poles, all possible variations in structure, material games, different ways of spreading, and radically some words impose themselves in space, becoming the key reading of the specific work. Sensory values are enhanced through the insertion of plastic or cardboard objects – capable of providing vibrations and reliefs to the surface, intensifying the visual effect.
An example is „Lucky Red“ (2023). The support is enriched with material additions, scratches, and engravings: on it, attention continually shifts from what is above to what appears from the underlying layers, from an extrusion to a hollowing out of the image. The pictorial field comes alive with color spreads that either condense or become more varied, adding a trace that refers to dripping by Jackson Pollock. Completing the formal play is the gradation that moves to different shades of red that lighten to orange, accompanied by peaks of white. The choice of red is not casual: our artist uses it persistently for the sense of vitality it transmits. This presence lights up the depiction, transforming it into a pulsing organism, as if the observer were imbued with an energy capable of invigorating the painting, which stands not as a mere decorative object but as an integral element of reality, of existence. The counterpoint of the red is provided by a series of paintings that shine with precious golden tones. Natural elements like a tree and the moon are characterized by this sparkling harmony.
Other paintings, however, use the technique of collage. Through this, one enters into a wide and distinct production by our artist. Such works come alive with human figures, particularly feminine ones; often flowers are noticed, in realistic representations or evoked through other materials, worked to simulate their appearance. A constant play between reality and fiction is established, between artistic material and objectual reality transported onto the support. The combinations construct a narrative that is not based on the rational logics of everyday life; to identify the hidden connections between the parts, one must follow the various media that the artist proposes and feel, through a spiritual accord before an intellectual one, the rich formal solutions through which the artist constructs her own poetic world.
The art of Isolde Mischkot is a continuous immersion in the energetic flow of creativity. The brilliant colors are accompanied by the ability to borrow images from the most disparate sources to give them new life. The brushstrokes vibrate, the material is held back with difficulty on the support, her works, ultimately, speak telling only of joy and poetry.
L’OPINIONISTA 2023
Review of an exhibition by Isolde Mischkot, presented by the Italian art critic Marta Lock in the Online Magazine L’Opinionista (July 2023)
Aesthetic balance and energy of colour in the artworks by Isolde Mischkot, between Abstract Expressionism and Material Informalism
At the moment when an artist becomes aware of which language he wants to use, be it character or creative inclination, the painting style turns into a true message, a visual invitation to the observer to dig deep into his inner self, but also to discover the often implicit meaning hidden behind everyday life. But above all, the exhortation is not to dwell on the detail, but rather to try to understand the more general aspect of everything that happens by chance under the sensitive gaze of the author of the artwork. This is exactly the creative dimension in which today’s protagonist moves, who chooses non-form precisely in order to infuse her canvases with a message that is more emotional and at the same time attentive to aesthetic harmony.
It was the 1950s that brought a radical innovation to Abstract Art, with the creative vehemence of Jackson Pollock and his fellow founders of Abstract Expressionism for whom the plastic gesture could not disregard interiority, feeling, all those profound storms that then manifested themselves on the canvas in the form of impetuosity, or calm reflection, or even through a sign-like execution, of which colours were the interpreters. Precisely by virtue of its expressive intensity, this movement over the years has been reinterpreted by great contemporary masters who have been able to bring their own personal touch, such as Gerhard Richter, one of the most highly regarded living artists, whose Abstract Expressionism has evolved to the point of verging on photography and mixed media.
The Austrian artist Isolde Mischkot, in turn, has pursued a path of artistic research that initially led her, when still a child, to measure against figurative subjects and watercolours, then over time, despite the insecurity in her artistic talents that prevented her from undertaking specific studies but still totally fascinated by art to the point of constantly visiting exhibitions and museums in every part of the world she has visited during her travels, she has developed a style akin to her creative nature by virtue of which she has decided to resume her old passion and turn it into a professional career. Her Abstract Expressionism shows a chromatic maturity learnt during her numerous painting courses, but above all an inner wisdom that allows her to put the awareness of living on canvas in a balanced and stable manner, that equilibrium between events and the strength to take note of them and turn them to one’s own favour, which emerges from the tones that are sometimes full and in harmonic contrast, others more subdued and shaded in colour scale.
Her pictorial language, however, cannot stop at the simple use of acrylic, but also needs to introduce experimentation with matter, that interweaving of collage with the introduction of cardboard, strings, fabric, stone, sand, gold leaf, paint, textiles; everything contributes to emphasising Isolde Mischkot’s emotional message, that invitation to the observer to get in touch with her own sensations through which she allows herself to be guided in the instinctive understanding of her striking works. The red and yellow, predominantly present in her canvases, emanate a strong and decisive energy, the same energy that is needed to face with courage and determination the circumstances that follow one another and that, even when sudden and overwhelming, are necessary for the evolution of the individual, to measure oneself against one’s own ability to get up and find meaning in everything; the artworks in softer tones, sometimes enriched with gold leaf, seem to be the expression of a balance, of a stability from which emerges all the serenity, all the contentment that after a path full of trials and obstacles one manages to conquer.
Perhaps the same path that led Isolde Mischkot to give up and then again to decide to pursue her artistic dream. In the canvas POWER, in fact, emerges all the will and resilience necessary to overcome difficulties, to surpass apparent blockages, represented by a thick black line that seems like an insurmountable opposition in reaching the next level; and yet, in spite of everything, the human being, the soul, somehow manages to get around the impediments, to proceed even at the cost of causing itself wounds, told by the horizontal lines that look like cuts on the sides of the central part of the composition marked by the colour beige, and then emerge upwards almost forgetting the difficulties because fulfilled by the goal achieved. Isolde Mischkot’s outlook on life is always positive, her strong energy and resoluteness propagate from her canvases and intensely reach the observer, leading him into her world of awareness and also of courage in facing the ups and downs of existence.
In the canvas MOMENT, the different chromatic spots seem to be the contrasting emotions that follow one another at certain junctures, those confused circumstances that happen suddenly, generating a range of reactions, at times even divergent but then all converging in the whole of the experience, of what each individual, at certain moments in life, has to deal with. The next moment everything takes on a different, more comprehensive meaning and it is therefore up to the person involved in the event to be able to move away from contingency to observe the broader design that the energies are pointing to.
But one’s path, if one has the ability to draw lessons and experience from all that happens, sometimes even too quickly, then evolves towards a wisdom capable of instilling harmony, calm and serenity, which are in fact the sensations towards which any human being tends and which Isolde Mischkot interprets by choosing light tones, often enriched with gold leaf, as in the work GOLDEN INSPIRATION, or realised on media other than canvas, such as wood, precisely to emphasise how concrete and stable the individual’s evolution can be if he maintains an indispensable openness towards listening to himself and the energies that surround him. HARMONY is therefore the utmost expression of this concept, it tells of that enveloping calm that emerges when one is able to achieve full awareness of oneself, of past battles, of the strength that had to be employed to re-emerge and to find that functional balance to smile more at circumstances without the fear of being destabilised by them.
Isolde Mischkot exhibits regularly in Vienna and all over Austria, receiving acclaim from the public and the professionals.