Stillleben in Bronze – Der Reigen – 2020
120x25x25 cm

Linda Maria Schwarz explores everyday processes in order to find the extraordinary in the often seemingly banal daily life. We are faced with the difficulty of grasping everyday life. Rita Felski writes that it is, “at first glance […] everywhere, yet nowhere”. Consequently, its importance as a manifestation of certain power structures is quickly underestimated or overlooked. So, what happens when everyday life becomes art? If everyday life is no longer seen as a filling material between the great events of life and the “day-to-day” things are given enough importance to be art itself? Since art detached itself from royal and papal influence at the beginning of the 19th century, the question arose as to how it should relate to (bourgeois) everyday life. The views range from the demand for an engagement of the arts in society to a desire for complete autonomy of art (l’art pour l’art). This goes as far as the view that, as Beuys used to say, everyone in everyday life is an artist.

Through the surprisingly everyday material in her works, Linda Maria Schwarz refers abstractly to the critical content of her art – the everyday life of a woman and, not least, to that lived by herself. The artworks are souvenirs from everyday life, elevated to the – literally understood – brilliant state of a bronze sculpture. 

Elisabeth Zuparic-Bernhard
Wissenschaftliche Assistenz der Leitung am Zentrum für GegenwartsKunst und
Mitarbeiterin am Kunstgeschichte Institut an der Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz