GLORIA BENEDER Artist
"The sea is not a landscape,
it is the experience of eternity,
of nothingness, ..."
Thomas Mann
Gloria Beneder, born 1969 in Upper Austria, freelance artist
lives and works - after many years in Vienna - now in Steyr
Graduate of the fashion school Vienna in the castle Hetzendorf in fashion design
Apprenticeship as make-up artist at "Die Maske - Bernd Bauer"
Education as costume designer and costume painter
Engagements at opera houses and theatres in Austria (for example the Wiener Staatsoper) and Germany,where she realized projects by Hermann Nitsch, Eric Woolfson (The Alan Parsons Project), Philip Glass and Peter Handke, among others, for artists such as Jose Carreras, Placido Domingo, Agnes Baltsa and Vladimir Malakhov.
Direction of the costume painting Musiktheater Linz
The intensive occupation with the different techniques of the design, color design and her activity of many years as makeup artist and stylist for film, fashion and advertisement sharpened her eye for details and moods.
Exhibitions:
2014
Gallery Seywald, Salzburg/Austria
2016
Gallery Seywald, Salzburg/Austria
2024
Gallery Seywald, Salzburg/Austria
Cycle "endlos nichts" | "endless nothing"
The sky and the sea have determined my work and my life for years.
I paint to achieve a certain sense of detachment.
Since 1997, these works have been the result of countless stays abroad and diving trips in the Indian Ocean that have focused my attention on the illusion of a border - the horizon.
Always present and at the same time constantly changing with the viewer. A series of vanishing points, a line that nourishes desire and suggests endless freedom.
Where the sea meets the sky, all emotions are concentrated, the unreal seems real and yet never becomes tangible.
The sea as pictorial metaphor for freedom – freedom of thought, as space without borders – neither socially nor physically. A window you can open and disappear through.
Only the echo of a mood and not reality is recorded.
Not the obvious is in the foreground, the concrete dissolves to create space for the imaginary. The final destruction snatches away the beauty of its banality, makes the statics of two-dimensionality disappear and brings a movement, like a sensory illusion, into the picture.
The observer has to take his time, immerse himself completely in the picture, then it opens up in all its depth. A superficial glance is not enough. The titles of the pictures are the coordinates of the places I have visited and refer exclusively to places in the ocean.
I mainly work in large format in order to increase the impression of boundlessness.
Cycle "endlich" | "finally me"
"Skin - A presumed moment like frozen time.
The contemplation loses its meaning, while the tide rises to the fingertips
and then sinks back to the ankles.
Motionless I am the expectation."
A body used consciously as a means of power. The desire to be a self-determined object – not a contradiction in itself, but the essence.
Due to the short detail of the picture it is possible for the viewer to see very close, vividly, larger than life. At the same time, however, this also keeps him at a distance.
There is no eye contact, which achieves the desired demarcation.
Attraction and distancing determine the scenery. The colour red as an inforcing moment, as a teaser crying out for attention.
The blurriness of the motif emphasizes the tense mood as if the air was vibrating.
Charged with emotions, as if I remain motionless for a moment only to withdraw from contemplation in the next moment.
Contact
