photography - Austria / II. Republic of Austria 2015 - 68 Euro Cent

"Vexations" is the title of the motif by Gregor Schmoll, with which the attractive series "Fotokunst Österreich" now finds its interesting continuation. Born in 1970 in the Styrian town of Bruck an der Mur, he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts under Michelangelo Pistoletto and Heimo Zobernig in Vienna, blurring reality and the imaginary skillfully in his works. In his photographs, seemingly everyday things are set in surreal and absurd contexts - for example, it is only at second glance that one sees the face in the shape of a vase. References to psychoanalysis, philosophy, literature and film are not uncommon in Schmoll. As so often, his art is not easy to put into words. Schmoll, who is often referred to as the "Monsieur Surrealist" of Austrian contemporary art, thinks that he wants to fathom the outlandish, the hidden and the mysterious. He attributes this to an experience in his childhood, since for him, at the age of nine, "the pictures lose their innocence," as he puts it. He saw Salvador Dalí's painting "The Metamorphosis of the Narcissus" in London's Tate Gallery - since then he has been concerned with the question of what appearance is and what is reality. He uses the medium to which the greatest objectivity is attributed: photography. His works, which were awarded with the Viktor Fogarassy Prize, the State Scholarship for Artistic Photography and the Photo Prize of the City of Graz, among others, have already found their audience in numerous European galleries.