Irene ANDESSNER

The artist, born in Salzburg and now living in Vienna, studied at the academies of fine art in Venice (Emilio Vedova) and Vienna (Max Weiler and Arnulf Rainer). Since 1988 her main subject has been the self-portrait, which she originally realised in the form of paintings and from the mid-90s in tableaux vivants, photo and video stagings.

 Self-staging with role-play takes the place of the painted self-portrait. «After-image» of art-historical and time-historical examples such as Sofonisba Anguissola or Constanze Mozart emerge, as well as sacred (Black Madonna) and fictional (Rachel from «Bladerunner») individuals and modern
myths (Marlene Dietrich). In the «I.M.Dietrich» project the role
identification goes as far as the assumption of the exemplar's family name
through a real marriage. As «Wanda» she (re)produces the ideal image which Leopold of Sacher-Masoch's had of his wife. In 2006 she interpreted the traditional but questionably authentic portrait of Mozart («I.A. Mozart(?)»). At the invitation of the Federation of Austrian Industry she temporarily transformed, in an interactive performance with four mother roles, the paternoster in the Haus der Industrie into a «maternoster» (mater nostra).

Handed down, remembered, imagined, idealised, self «perceived» images the image of the woman to whom she lends her changeable face «is always a fiction – in the eyes of the beholder as much as of society» (Andessner). Not «I was» but «I am» (as she calls her production team) is the artist's motto. A credo through which she herself gives absolutely contemporary expression to historical figures. And offers an art which counterpoints the contemporary.