Fire

Claudia Unterluggauer, a young artist from Carinthia, is currently focusing on emotions and expressive forms of expression. Yet—both before and in between—she also enjoys telling stories, using fairy tales as a frame of reference and placing herself within that context: a form of self-staging. Then there is her enthusiasm for the wide range of creative and technical possibilities she employs, depending on the subject matter and the desired visual impact. She combines the old with the new: gouache with drawing, photography and digital image editing, acrylic painting with medieval layering and glazing techniques, oil paint with pencil. Unterluggauer describes her current approach as an expressive outlet; this led her to the theme of fire—still associated with a tangible figure, yet in itself devoid of specific content. It is a blazing, expansive medium for spontaneous expression—a purely painterly element intended to seduce the viewer into looking, simply looking, and allowing themselves to be moved. It is a form capable of conveying passion and overflowing joy just as readily as rage and frenzy.

As a technical counterpoint, Unterluggauer has adopted the droplet shape. Rendered with sculptural depth through fine graphite and colored pencil drawings combined with gouache, these droplets detach themselves, trickling from an amorphous mass before floating freely and reflecting an imaginary light. In reality, however, the droplet serves primarily as a form of expression—a vessel, so to speak, for a multitude of nuanced emotional states. “Different color palettes represent different emotions,” the artist explains. For her, feelings such as frustration, loneliness, and fear—as well as respect or shame—always have a consistent coloration: “Frustration always appears as a poisonous green, whereas the role of the victim is colorless, fragile, almost transparent. The background colors emerge from purely painterly decisions.” Her current theme of fire leaves its mark here, too: droplets of fire.

Verena Kienast, 2014

Of Stars, Droplets, and Fire

Welcome, esteemed audience;
you now find yourselves inside my head.

Wearing a pea-green dress painted with a pearl necklace, the artist Claudia Unterluggauer stands before us, inviting us to forget the everyday and follow her. She takes us into her vast, branching realm of tales and fairy tales. The entry—or exit, as she has envisioned it—is through her eyes. On the homepage of her website—well worth a visit—we find her eye sockets resembling giant picture windows along the wall of an imaginary corridor.

Acting as a guide, the artist approaches several closed doors. The image calls to mind the “Magic Theater” in Hermann Hesse’s *Steppenwolf* or Jean Cocteau’s film *Orpheus*. It is like those fairy tales where the hero or heroine must choose one of several doors to reach their goal—though in those stories, usually only a single door leads to happiness.

With Claudia Unterluggauer, however, we are met—as she emphasizes—with spaces of thought that hold equal weight. As the artist puts it: “Through these doors, you enter screening rooms where you can view my work.”

Spellbound, we stand beneath a sky filled with stars that shimmer above us. Each star represents a fairy tale, a story from the past or from a future yet unborn. Her great-grandfather, Josef Lexer (1889–1974), is one such star. A musician and composer, he serves as a vital anchor point in Claudia Unterluggauer’s spatial architecture.

We ascend as far as the “Playaden”—an artist collective she founded—and while we are still marveling at the view, the stars transform into droplets and fall to earth. We encounter the girl with the Star-Money dress, the child with the matches, and Mother Holle. Gold and misfortune, loneliness and sorrow fill the large drops of transformation. A vast number of drops—akin to the stars—binds emotions and preserves them. One is reminded of homeopathy, in which varying potencies are bound within the drops.

“Transformation” is the second major spatial architecture within Claudia Unterluggauer’s “thought-space”—or, as she herself puts it:
…the next thick branch of a tree where all the branches are of equal value and bear fruit.

Darkness, death, and grief—we encounter them again in the form of “drops.” They create an infinite world of thought in which, trusting our guide, we enter an “expanded painterly space.” It is a place where narrative content in painting is not merely tolerated but desired and demanded. The realm of fairy tales is taken seriously; worlds of emotion and miracles are lived out. The mockery and assaults of time are consumed in the fire of emotion.

In the third section, the purifying fire of passionate gesture holds sway. Here, within the magma of the soul’s volcano, even seemingly incompatible elements merge.

But how is it all created? How does the artist draw her fairy tales and emotions, and how does she organize these major thematic threads?
The exhibition venues themselves help determine her selection of works and series. She draws and shapes using oil, mixed media, graphite, colored pencil, and chalk, choosing her artistic tools according to the specific theme and “thought-space.” She is fascinated by the repetitive nature of the images; consequently, the number of works featuring drops and stars continues to grow. A diversity of themes and the titles of her works are of great importance to Claudia Unterluggauer. Her inward and outward gaze, along with the tolerance and parity she accords to the themes and techniques she employs, all flow into her concept of “spatial architectures.”

Because she works with such technical assurance and mastery, she can move from one theme to another without ever losing her way. She walks beneath her own starry sky, transforming into countless droplets, only to rise again and again—like the phoenix from the fire of her drawings—with new stories.

What does she say?
Artistic work opens my eyes to my own world,
as well as to the world of others.

Roman Scheidl, Balingen 2011