Aspects of her work are the analysis and deconstruction of material, technology, and its structures. The interaction of text and art is also a central topic that is present in many projects. In addition to the solitary working practice, she also cooperates with other artists for different projects e.g. the exhibition project out there in public space in Vienna with Joonas Lahtinen (2019, commissioned by the SHIFT Funding Program, City of Vienna). Furthermore, the collaborative way of working as an artist duo with Eva Beierheimer in a long-term cooperation results in many different projects
(www.art-words.net). Miriam Laussegger has participated in international exhibitions and projects as well as artist-in-residence programmes in Paris and Örnsköldsvik (Sweden).

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Miriam Laussegger’s oeuvre ranges from photography and video to performance pieces and objects. She develops her works by processing materials. Everything that can be processed becomes material. Industrially prefabricated semi-finished goods, structure, cardboard, snow, contrast, fabric, text, video, abandoned places. Everything is material!
Her passion is driven by a joyful interest in everyday life. Photography is often used as an intermediate step. However, in the photographic process, the results shift away from the initial image. Her goal is not the simple depiction of subjects, but rather the transformation of materials in different media.
In her work, Laussegger frequently makes use of special skills and handicraft. From pottery to screen printing to welding, Miriam Laussegger constantly expands the scope of her work.
Her works emerge from a complex interplay with their surrounding space. This can hardly be traced when only examining methodology or material. Her works rather explore methods and matter, like the use of language in the arts or the surface of cardboard tubes. Disassembling, analysing, reassembling. She elevates this approach to become the methodology of her work – a method that allows her to ceaselessly question every origin. Thereby she consistently defies simple categorizations.
Besides her curiosity to get to the bottom of things and the passion to acquire skills, getting involved in new topics, might possibly be the most outstanding quality of Laussegger’s work.
In one of our conversations she compared being an artist with the creative process in the novel Frankenstein. Well, this is initially a reference to the concept of the artist as genius from Romanticism, but also – and this brings us closer to the cause – a rebellion against nature. Something new arises from what is already existing, but this can never be fully controlled. Miriam Lausseger's works of art owe their existence as appearance to the material.


Daniela Wageneder-Stelzhammer
Curator of Contemporary Art

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Miriam Laussegger: Object, transferred

Spilling from one medium into the other

From a certain angle, initially there’s nothing at all to see: Miriam Laussegger’s print from the series Object, transferred appears like a blank white sheet. Only a step closer, or to the side, literally puts the print in a different light, revealing delicate glossy white forms. The monochrome series of prints that give the exhibition in the framework of At the Printing Table its name condense Laussegger’s method in white and black and illustrate her almost feverish search for and examination of the right material.

Miriam Laussegger emphasizes that process is at the center of her artistic practice, just as she likes to immerse herself in working with a technique. In the case of Object, transferred she focused on refining the motif- and color-reduced prints during her year-long residency at the Viadukt screen-printing workshop, on selecting the right shade and feel of the print color. The tone-on-tone works tie in with earlier ones, such as the series Ice (2009), which traced the elusive, low-contrast motif of icy water surfaces.

Rather than a concept, fascination with a material is the starting point of her artistic process. Laussegger calls herself a ‘freak’ for material and describes the collection she has created in her own studio: building materials like pipes, metal strips or concrete blocks meet artificial turf and cardboard rolls. Starting from these materials, she develops works site-specifically for exhibitions, using a variety of artistic forms of expression, from printing to photography, text and room-filling installation, to furniture welding.

Individual motifs are taken up again and again in different works – Laussegger describes her procedure as a ‘spilling over from one medium into another.’ In Object, transferred, this happens twice: with the eponymous series of prints, whose abstract-looking arch forms are based on the installation Not specified object (2022), which she created with Sascha Alexandra Zaitseva in reference to a Minoan object in the Athens National Museum. Delicate aluminum ribbons from the artist’s material collection are stood in ceramic vessels and bend into seemingly feather-light arcs through the exhibition space.

Laussegger performs another such object transfer in a second group of works. The Passion of Structure (2023) revolves around the motif of the wire spool – found objects from the same trip to Athens that have already become a sculpture group with ceramic replicas (The Passion of CMYK, 2022) and in Object, transferred now appear both sculpturally and motifically in screen prints. In her exploration of the industrial object, Laussegger addresses the relationship of manual labor and machine production as a theme, just as screen printing itself  already implies as a medium of mass reproduction.

Despite all formal rigor, a playful element is inherent in Laussegger’s prints – from the lucky find of the initial object to the coincidences shaping a manual printing process. Like the metaphorical spilling over into another medium, it is unpredictable, sometimes almost silent and murmuring, sometimes effervescent and full of spray.

Kathrin Heinrich