Katja Schenker

Museum Haus Konstruktiv is opening its new premises in the western section of Löwenbräukunst-Areal with a solo exhibition on Katja Schenker (b. 1968). For more than two decades, this Swiss artist has devoted herself to performative works, drawings, sculptures and installations in indoor and outdoor spaces. She mainly develops her artworks from natural materials, whereby not only their sensuous qualities, but also spatial and temporal aspects, such as density or transience, play an important role.
 

4.6.2026–6.9.2026
curated by Sabine Schaschl and Muriel Pérez

Exhibition handout

One prominent feature of Schenker’s work is its engagement with the respective architectural space in which it is situated. In her exhibition at Museum Haus Konstruktiv, artwork and architecture are again intertwined. For instance, she used the venue’s eight solid pillars for the performance Caryatids Go for a Swim, the source of the exhibition’s title, which premiered on the evening of the vernissage. In ancient architecture, caryatids are female load-bearing figures, taking the place of columns or pillars. In contrast to their male counterpart Atlas, who is often shown crouching under the burden placed upon him and displaying his muscles, the caryatids perform their work upright and with apparent ease.

For the performance, five women left their designated positions and threw balls of string to each other, causing a dense net-like structure to gradually take shape. At the same time, the strings were threaded over and through two metal objects with an internal grid of copper springs. As a result of the repeated throwing, stretching and bending, these wires were altered, representing a process of transformation, interaction and opening.

The performance Caryatids Go for a Swim thus comprises movement and counter-movement, action and reaction, throwing and catching. Analogies to steadfastness and loss, to stability and dissolution, emerge within this dynamic 
framework. Such tension is typical of Schenker’s artistic practice, which has, for many years, addressed gravity and the subversion thereof.

These aspects are also conveyed in the exhibited drawings, many of which Schenker created specifically for the presentation at Museum Haus Konstruktiv. 
 

In the series Red Is Not the Only Colour, Volcano Street and Jubilee Street, commenced in 2025 and 2022 respectively, the body is immediately present: Here, Schenker has used her own body in a performative act requiring preparation, concentration and conscious decisions.

Close examination of the drawings often reveals a centre or a condensed moment – a point where, with particular intensity, the body has come into contact with the image carrier and left distinct traces. From there, lines, densifications and paths of motion unfold, making the creative process visible and its spatial dynamics palpable. For these works on paper, Schenker uses oil sticks and oil pastels in various shades of red. These materials are particularly suitable for applying colour as a result of pressure and movement, because their intensity does not diminish, unlike that of a brushstroke. With colours such as vermilion red and cadmium red, she chooses warm full-bodied hues, which she describes as dramatic, introspective and explosive all at once.

To anyone taking another look at the metal objects from the performance Caryatids Go for a Swim, parallels with the drawings become apparent: Like the colour red, the metal copper is also associated with warmth and energy, 
due to its high thermal conductivity. Linked with the goddess Venus in alchemy, copper is also an essential trace element and thus vital for the human body, which leaves its mark on the paper here.

In addition to the exhibition in the western section, five videos of the artist’s performances can be seen in the glass box in the passageway leading to the eastern section of the building. Produced between 2011 and 2026, they offer insight into her career by way of example: moll (performance), vesuv (performance), peau articulée (performance), dress (performance) and Caryatids Go for a Swim (performance) (to be included after completion in mid-June).

In all of these works, Schenker takes the theme of the body, physicality and body perception as a starting point, from which she occupies or creates spaces. In doing so, she is particularly interested in the permeability of boundaries – between body and body, between body and space, between material and movement, between stability and change. Her works are not finished forms, but open structures, which keep transforming during the creative process, and into which presence and transience are incorporated in equal measure.
 

A publication accompanying the exhibition will be released by Verlag für moderne Kunst, Vienna, featuring texts by Deborah Levy and Gioia Dal Molin, as well as an interview between Sabine Schaschl and Katja Schenker.