Sabine Groschup - Paul Albert Leitner

Two sophisticated austrian artists in self-portraits

Sabine Groschup, Paul Albert Leitner

The traveling exhibition focuses on the photographic self-portrait from an artistic perspective. It deliberately follows in the wake of mass-media self-preoccupation, without directly addressing this theme. Accordingly, it unites individual and self-presentations by two Austrian artists with national and international reputations.

Paul Albert Leitner has been photographing himself in analogue mode for over thirty years. Sabine Groschup was already trained in self-observation during her painting studies with Maria Lassnig. While in Leitner’s self-portraits staging, pose, and a desire for extraversion play as much of a role as the obligatory “photo suit,” Groschup’s self-portraits and series of images of the self stand for introspection and abundant consciousness of the self. With the camera, Groschup reenacts the idea of “body awareness” that Lassnig pursued in painting. Her Self-awareness (and the like) and Leitner’s Self-Portraits (Déjà-vu) are connected by the ingenious Collaboration-Work at the center of the show, which spans around one hundred works.