karin maria pfeifer
Karin Maria Pfeifer is an artist based in Vienna where she studied at the University of Vienna and soon after graduation, expanded her artistic practice by establishing the art space “ flat1". As co-founder, she has been managing and curating the gallery since 2008 whilst keeping up her individual artistic practice.
Pfeifer work is characterised by a multimedia approach, resulting in pieces including videos, photography, graphics, painting, and space-based installations. As of 2023, her work has been shown in Austria and various European countries and overseas, and is locally represented in various collections and museums. Whilst, at a first glance, Karin Maria Pfeifer’s work might appear irritating, often lacking the aesthetically homogenous character we are used to in artistic practice, her signature does not rely solely on visual, external aspects. Pfeifer allows her attitude towards the interrelationships between space and the object to manifest in different artistic languages, while still communicating the same fundamental idea.Tying together her entire oeuvre are a common bracket and a common approach to the characteristics of everyday life in art. One of these characteristics consists of the endeavour to repeatedly dissolve the learned, commonly accepted relationship between space and object and to rearrange and transfer it into a new mode of perception. This is achieved through aesthetic condensations, superimpositions, or contrasts, that are recognisable in Pfeifer’s work. She thereby directs the gaze of the observer to individual aspects of the reality shown, much like a zoom of a camera lens, and thus opens up new ways of seeing.
A second focus of Karin Maria Pfeifer's work revolves around feminist issues. She articulates gendered injustices and dissonances that are still an integral part of everyday life in a 21st century society. Even though, or maybe precisely because, she is dealing with issues of such gravity, many of Pfeifer's pieces should be taken with a pinch of salt and a good measure of (self-)irony.
