Austrian painter Xenia Hausner is obsessed with people. Captivated by the interpersonal relationships she observes in the everyday, the Austrian artist absorbs these vignettes only to reclaim them in her own imagined narratives. Ordinary people are models for her large-scale paintings, which using bold, vivid colors, depict these figures in an often exaggerated and theatrical manner. The women that make up the main subjects of her paintings are at times challenging and defiant, while at others seductive, aloof or vulnerable. ArtAsiaPacific met up with the 63-year-old artist a few days before her first solo exhibition in Hong Kong, which opens tomorrow at the Hong Kong Arts Centre, to discuss her background in stage design, her working process and her innate infatuation with exploring the lives of those around her.
You graduated with a degree in stage design. What led you to start painting in 1992?
Stage design is interesting and I love to do it but at a certain point I had a desire to do something on my own. It wasn’t premeditated, one day I just tried it out. Between two stage designs, I took a panel and started to paint. I just liked the process and that’s really how it all began. It was later that I tried analyzing my desire to paint and I believe it is because I enjoyed this concentration on myself that I could close the door and just paint.
They say that I paint large-scale paintings because I was in stage design. Well, they may think so but I’m not really sure because there are a lot of contemporary artists who create huge paintings and were never in that field. I’ll tell you one thing that they never mention, but which I think is true: I have an interest in humans, in people and their psychological interactions and relationships, and that has a lot to do with literature and theater.
Can you speak a little about your painting process?
In my studio, I have quite a lot of helpers. They create little stage designs, if you want to call them that. We often reconstruct a scene, that I have seen on the street or something that comes into my mind, and build it in the studio. For the work Cage People (2014), for example, I built a box and filled it with things I bought from markets in Hong Kong. I asked my models—a Korean music student and an Austrian art student—to squeeze themselves into this little space. We did several photo sessions and I was painting on a scaffold, where my easel was high up. I get the primary sketch of the painting from the photograph and then for the details I ask the models to get back into the box. The scenes become a type of installation. With all these elements, it’s almost as if I’m directing my own play; the models are acting out a story that has come from my imagination.
How do you select your models? Are there certain qualities or characteristics that attract you?
I try to overcome my shyness and introduce myself to people I see on the street. How I choose them is completely irrational and subjective, I can’t really describe it. It always takes me quite some time find the right people for a composition. These are ordinary people but there’s something about them that draws me to them. I don’t focus so much on the exterior of individuals, but try to capture their inner life, their character. It’s a kind of research for me, and in the end I know the models very well and they know me as well.
I see your extensive engagement with people as a form of humanistic research. What impressions have you gained of other individuals from your practice?
I feel like I know a lot about human beings, I’ve developed an intuition toward that. Seeing what happens between people is the most thrilling subject, this is what my focus is on. Through this research I feel like I have seen so much that now it’s all stored, like a reservoir.
There are many references in the title of your exhibition here in Hong Kong “Look Left–Look Right.” What was the inspiration for this title?
The title shows the dialogue between East and West that is reflected in the exhibition. Also, when you cross the streets in Hong Kong, there are signs on the pavement that say “look left, look right.” The idea came to me when I had to cross the street. You see these signs in London, but in Hong Kong, you also have the Chinese characters. I was drawn to how the Chinese characters and English words looked together, which I thought was fitting for the relationship between the two cultures that I explore in the show.
“Look Left – Look Right: Solo Exhibition of Xenia Hausner” opens on June 6 and will run through June 29, 2014 at the Hong Kong Arts Centre.
Sylvia Tsai is assistant editor at ArtAsiaPacific.