Maria Miesenberger

A figure whose posture and expression signal both strength, playfulness, and courage, floating thoughtfully before its perspectives, decisions, and choices – free or compelled by age, life, time, politics, and wars in the world. Its surface is covered by an engraved stylized pattern, inspired by the corneal nerve. The cornea; the window of the eye to the world, which enables us to see and at the same time protects the eye, causing us to blink involuntarily and close our eyes when touched. The sensitive, hidden interior, inverted to become an equally sensitive exterior, the skin. A vibrating membrane in the encounter with itself, life, and its challenges. By turning the normally hidden, physical inward outward, we are encouraged and reminded to both look within and reflect, and to open our eyes to what exists and happens here and now before our eyes in our time. A young individual claiming life and space, challenging, but also creating a silent presence with its momentarily frozen movement of possibilities." – Maria Miesenberger

Maria Miesenberger (born 1965 in Lund) is one of Sweden's most renowned artists. She studied at the University of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm (Konstfack, 1991–95) and at the Parsons School of Design in New York (1995–96). From 1995 to 2003, she lived and worked in New York. Maria Miesenberger achieved her breakthrough in the 1990s with her photo series 'Sverige/Sweden.' Since her debut in 1993, her work has been featured in approximately fifty solo exhibitions and even more group exhibitions across Europe and the United States.

Maria Miesenberger's works are distinguished by a wide variety of materials and technical curiosity. She carefully selects suitable materials and techniques to realize her artistic ideas. She works with textiles, aluminum, bronze, and stainless steel, as well as ceramic granite and glass. Her art is characterized by a continuous exploration of how identity is formed, influenced, and altered, and what it truly means to be human. In doing so, she uses the human body as a cast and starting point for narratives about the paradoxes of existence—where the material merges into a work in which form, thought, and content are inseparably connected. By combining figurative and abstract elements, Miesenberger seeks to illuminate the perpetual relationship between the physical and the spiritual.

 

 

An initiative of the Swedish Embassy in Berlin. With the kind courtesy of the Anna Bohman Gallery, Stockholm, and Galerie Leu, Munich. With the generous support of Vattenfall and the Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation.