Text on the occasion of the exhibition “TASTE IT”
Text: Christoph Rodler

When looking at paintings by Ingrid Mauthner, what catches the eye and lingers on in one’s memory is the strong presence of the decorative, regardless whether it might be the patterns on fabrics or wallpapers, stucco or typographical elements or even graffiti. If the paintings themselves should have a decorative character it is not an end in itself. The decorative only represents one part that enters, so to speak, a synthesis with other visual elements. There are representational scenes and interiors familiar from lifestyle and fashion magazines, staged spaces and situations with a hint of decadence. Despite the strong presence of these themes, once more they are not the main content of Ingrid Mauthner’s paintings. They only represent the starting point of an artistic process in the course of which content and form are synthesised. The representational composition is frequently rendered in simplified, flat depictions; whereas natural chromaticity is concerned, it is subordinated, following the idea of the elevated impact of painting in pure, unmixed colours that are regularly contrasted with black. The perspective is freely adapted in service of the visual composition; at times it is completely abandoned. Then, the space turns into pure image area, which contains occasionally decorative elements. In a further step even these ornamental structures are beginning to dissolve, are abstracted so as to turn the process of painting into the sole compositional means of the image.

The art of Ingrid Mauthner hovers in this area of tension between figurative, representational and abstract painting. Experienced and instinctively she succeeds, in a certainly not unproblematic territory, in keeping the emerging paintings from turning into decorations themselves. This is not an easy balancing act and the decision whether a work might be regarded as an aesthetic, decorative object or furthermore manages to provide intellectual stimuli can frequently neither be answered unequivocally nor be regarded as generally valid.

Text: L.W.