Artist: Alicia Viebrock

Galerie Kandlhofer presents Bellaboteurs, the third solo exhibition of Alicia Viebrock (b. 1986, Munich) at the gallery.

The title is an amalgamation of the words ‘bella’ and ‘saboteur’, fusing the concepts of beauty and deliberate destruction. These seemingly diametrically opposed notions are re-appraised by Viebrock, who considers the possibility for closeness between these ideas - instances where a pursuit of an ideal may lead to the destruction of the very objective itself. Viebrock’s works are a stage where these notions play out, oscillating across extremes such as dense colourfield and empty spaces, total spontaneity and deliverable placement, as well as shifting between monochromatic and vibrant colour palettes.

Painting, as both process and result, is highly personal for Viebrock. Requiring total immersion and absorption into her surroundings, existence, experience, observations and thoughts, the resulting works are receptacles of a monumental energy transfer and can be understood as emotional self-portraits. Colour itself presents a series of unique properties, its vibrational potential operating as a unique language, a conduit of communication and counter-balancing force.

Viebrock’s works are deeply based in the language of Abstract Expressionism, catalysed by artists such as Joan Mitchell and Helen Frankenthaler. Blending elements of open, artistic impulse with gestural forms, applied in a bodily manner, Bellaboteurs presents paintings which have an embedded lyrical movement, a fluidity which showcase flickering and extinguishing, dancing movements and colour.

Materiality is a key concern for Viebrock. Using primarily ink and acrylic paint, she plays with the paint, thickening it with dispersion or thinning with water, in order to control, or abandon, the medium’s properties by changing its weight. She splashes, pools, overlaps, blends, smudges and sweeps across the canvas, carving out rivulets and manipulating streams of colour which flow into and over one another. Often working initially with the painting flat on the floor, Viebrock tilts the canvas, changing its orientation so that the pooled paint drips and blends, mingling intentionality and chance on the painted surface.

Much like the exhibition title, Viebrock names her paintings using a combination of double entendre and free association, following words or phrases that are stuck in her head. In an act akin to the freeing swoop of colour across canvas, these ear worms are exorcised from her mind, liberated as they are rooted to a painting. Free from a heavy-handed determiner of meaning or anecdotal interpretation, the titles such as Head a ferrari, body a fiat (z) and Tschickarella grant levity to the emotional charge of her paintings, another form of subversion and manipulation.

About the artist:

Alicia Viebrock (b. 1986, Munich, Germany) studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf under Professor Herbert Brandl and lives and works in Vienna and Cologne.

Her recent solo exhibitions include ‘Manienna’, Galerie Bärbel Grässlin, Frankfurt (2024), ‚’Metamorphosis’, Gallery Tierra Garzón, Uruguay (2023), ’Tranquility Kink’, Galerie Kandlhofer, Vienna, ’Vulvarability’, FILIALE, Frankfurt (2022), 'Don’t fence me in', Piero Atchugarry Gallery, Miami (2022), 'Amygdala Mundi', FILIALE, Frankfurt (2021), 'Wishful Drinking', Galerie Kandlhofer Vienna (2021), 'Casino Peach', Galerie Heinz Holtmann, Cologne (2020), 'Amnesia Royal', FILIALE, Frankfurt am Main (2020), 'calories', FILIALE, Frankfurt am Main (2018), 'Nightfly', Galerie Heinz Holtmann, Cologne (2018), 'Rule of derivation', Kunstverein Recklinghausen (2017), 'Of Loners and Charmeurs', FILIALE, Frankfurt am Main (2017).

Selected group exhibitions include: ‘Die Sammlung Handel - Der eigene Weg’, MKM Museum Küppersmühle, Duisburg (2023), ‘Group Show’, FILIALE (2021), 'Garten Eden', FILIALE, Frankfurt am Main (2020), Summer Group Show 2020, Galerie Heinz Holtmann, Cologne (2020), 'jetzt!' - Junge Malerei in Deutschland, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Museum Wiesbaden, Kunstsammlung Chemnitz, Deichtorhallen Hamburg (2019), 'Miniaturen', FILIALE, Frankfurt am Main (2019), 'Some Trees', Nino Mier Gallery, Los Angeles, USA (2019), 'New Acquisitions', Rubell Family Collection, Miami, USA (2018), 'salondergegenwart', Leopoldshof, Hamburg (2018), 'QUINTESSENZ', Galerie Guido W. Baudach, Berlin (2017), 'Summer Group Show', Galerie Heinz Holtmann (2017).