Astrid Esslinger
Exhibition & Residency:
November 1 – 30, 2014

Astrid Esslinger lives and works in Linz, Austria. Esslinger studied journalism and art history at the University of Salzburg. She has been active as an independent artist since 1987. Since 2000 the focus of her work has been on painting (acrylic/canvas). In the course of numerous stays in Europe, Brazil, Iran, and the US, since 2005, she has developed the Hand luggage Productions (cut outs, packaging cardboard). Her works have been acquired by public and private collections in Austria, Germany, England, the USA, France, Spain, and Brazil.

“Astrid Esslinger’s Cut-Out-series Strichcodesklaven (“Barcode Slaves”) makes use of graphical strategies for an artistic analysis of global power relations. Her appropriation of logos and pictograms reflects geo-political identity constructions with artistic means, and ironically and critically relates the human figure to the codes of transnational financial and trade societies. Yet Esslinger’s playful rearrangement of existing frameworks of visual statements applies not only to visual art alone, but also refers to modes of thinking that are manifest in (post-) colonial gaze patterns. (…)

Esslinger’s Strichcodesklaven show us beings in the process of becoming: incomplete, unfinished figures in and with an equally unfinished reality. Yet this fundamental incompleteness is by no means a deficiency in Esslinger’s work. On the contrary: it is the experience of an incomplete reality that opens up an understanding of the mutability of the world.” -Tom Waibel in Fina Esslinger: Astrid Esslinger Paintings/Cut Outs, 2014

Publications

Fina Esslinger: Astrid Esslinger Paintings/Cut Outs, 2014 Ambra/Birkhäuser Vienna
Bilder ohne Titel, 2001, self-published and numerous catalogue articles
Positions 95, 1995, self-published
World Now—Greetings from the Isolation Tank, 1991, self-published

Buy Astrid Esslinger Paintings / Cut Outs. Werkauswahl – Selection of Works

Website