Greta Schödl
_Warps of Light
Curated by Paolo Cortese and Rosanna Ruscio
The solo show of Greta Schödl Warps of Light, curated by Paolo Cortese and Rosanna Ruscio, opens at Gramma_Epsilon Gallery in Athens on Tuesday 18 June at 18.00.
This is the first solo exhibition of the Austrian-Italian artist in Greece, and focuses mainly on two elements fundamental in Schödl’s poetics: writing as catharsis and nature as a point of reference. The fifty artworks on display include two-dimensional works, object-books, marble sculptures, and installations. Born in Hollabrunn, Austria, in 1929, Greta Schödl has been living and working in Bologna since the late 1950s. Starting within the realms of textile art, and then moving through more graphic practices, she soon encountered calligraphy. After a shift from static graphic elements to freer movements and vibrations of the line, she then searched the capabilities of thread and, through this medium, the profound meaning of female existence. She uses the mediums of paper or textile, where she literally weaves her words. The emphasis of her work, however, is not limited to the verbal element but rather to its arrangement within a well-defined space and the relationship it creates with the medium in use.
In her work, Schödl has been applying a very precise methodology for over 50 years, which is demonstrated by repeating the movement of writing a word that is usually the very subject of the work. The language is predominantly German, her native tongue, and the orientation is from left to right. But the importance of the written word is only relative because the protagonist of Greta Schödl’s work is the vibration that the artist creates by placing small golden markings, usually in the blanks of vowels. Her work acts as a backdrop to a rhythm that, through these small golden markings, highlights the relationship created between the artist and the object. These accents add a vertical rhythm to the composition, which in turn, visually dominates the horizontal rhythm of the text.
The mediums used are mostly taken from the natural environment: marble, bark, papyrus and paper, which she often crafts herself. Sometimes she uses pages from old books or music sheets, other times fabrics borrowed from the domestic world such as tea towels, pillowcases or sheets, to which she brings “new life” in a form of transfiguration.
Certainly, the female element is dominant in Schödl’s work, both in terms of social commitment by performing acts and educational activities, but also on a practical level, by the use of domestic objects, such as an ironing board or sheets, to create her works.
“Objects are able to communicate with us. We approach them both subconsciously and consciously, they have a memory and an energy made of vibrations” explains the artist on the occasion of the retrospective ‘Il tempo non esiste’ held in early 2024 at the headquarters of the Fondazione del Monte di Bologna e Ravenna, in Palazzo Paltroni, curated by Silvia Evangelisti.
Considered one of the most important artists of visual poetry, Greta Schödl has participated in many prestigious national and international exhibitions, such as the São Paulo Biennale and the 1978 Venice Biennale, in the historic exhibition Materialisation of Language curated by Mirella Bentivoglio. Invited by Adriano Pedrosa to this year’s Venice Biennale, she is participating with 12 works in the exhibition ‘Foreigners Everywhere’ in the Arsenale venue. In recent years her art has been exhibited at multiple international trade fairs, represented by the Richard Saltoun Gallery.
Warps of Light, with the Patronage of the Austrian Embassy in Athens, the Italian Embassy in Greece and the Italian Cultural Institute of Athens, is part of the ‘The Girls of Mirella’ project which Gramma_Epsilon Gallery dedicates to Mirella Bentivoglio and the artists she supported, and will be followed by a catalogue with contributions by Paolo Cortese and Rosanna Ruscio.
