Austrian artist Gabriela Bittner-Krainz, who signs her work simply “Krainz”, considers art one of the only venues where one can break free from expectations, a freedom and willingness to experiment that is evident throughout her practice. She moves from figurative acrylic canvases reminiscent of fellow Viennese painter Oskar Kokoschka, to multi-panel mixed media paintings that shift from representation to abstraction in a nearly narrative manner, to figurative sculptures made from an unpredictable mix of conventional and found materials. She shifts radically from one piece to the next, focusing on a still life or small animal in one piece before taking in an entire mountain range in great detail in the next.
This sense of unpredictability, constant transformation and evolution in Krainz’s practice recurs within each individual piece. Objects shift, break down and reshape themselves; representation slips suddenly into abstraction; shapes contort, explode and reassemble themselves. Krainz creates a visual realm where anything seems possible, and then puts her subjects through seemingly impossible changes and treatments.