The internationally recognised Leipzig artists Rosa Loy and Neo Rauch, married since 1985, are for the first time showing their work together in a large exhibition of some 80 works. The artists’ important works in the Essl collection, which form the basis of the show, are supplemented by works on loan, by new, never-beforeshown works direct from the studios and by drawings created by both artists specially for the exhibition. Curator Günther Oberhollenzer conducted an extensive interview with Loy and Rauch for the catalogue.

According to Neo Rauch, with the joint exhibition the artists are fulfilling a “long harboured wish” for which there has previously not been “a suitable venue and a stroke of good fortune in the calendar.” For Agnes and Karlheinz Essl, who have appreciated Loy and Rauch for many years, it is “a particular challenge to show the artist couple in a joint exhibition, as it is a question of doing justice to the individual expressive power of two such strong artistic personalities, to allow the differences but also very much what they have in common to show through.”

ROSA LOY Rote Narzisse, 2006 Kasein auf Leinen / casein on linen 170 x 130 cm Foto: Mischa Nawrata, Wien © VBK, Wien, 2011 bzw. VG Bildkunst, Bonn, 2011	NEO RAUCH Bergfest, 2010 Öl auf Leinwand / oil on canvas 300 x 250 cm Foto: Uwe Walter, Berlin; courtesy Galerie EIGEN+ART Leipzig/Berlin und Davis Zwirner, New York © VBK, Wien, 2011 bzw. VG Bildkunst, Bonn, 2011

INSIGHTS INTO THE IMAGE AND LIFE WORLDS
Rosa Loy and Neo Rauch grant a unique insight into their image and life worlds. “Everything is oriented on us, on our relationship and on the tension in our shared life and in our work,” emphasises Rosa Loy. In the exhibition a dialogue between the images is encouraged, which exposes the differences and the connecting lines. A particular enrichment are the works from the artists’ private collection, which among other things, according to Rosa Loy they “gave [one another] as mutual presents. Or did for one another. In this way, again, another layer or level of commonality can be seen.” Until now these could only be experienced in the artists’ house, because, as Rauch says, “There the pictures coexist in trusting harmony and occasionally in fruitful dissonance. So we have always had the opportunity to feel what might be if one were to permit these ultimately very different approaches that we pursue the possibility of a somewhat broader encounter and dance with one another.”


MULTI-LAYERED CONSTELLATIONS BEHIND THE GARDENS
Rosa Loy and Neo Rauch chose the exhibition title “Behind the Gardens” themselves. As a metaphorical image the title refers to the artists’ intention to capture spontaneous image inspirations as motif fragments on the canvas and to network multilayered constellations in order to catch moments of the irrational and the mysterious. “Behind the gardens there are areas of the unseparated, the untamed; the wood is there, monsters lurk there and wild undergrowth,” says Neo Rauch. The artist feels it a challenge “to leave the little paradise garden and make contact in the undergrowth and the morass with the abysmal formations of human circumstances and possibilities and to make them useable for myself, to domesticate them and ultimately to love and accept them.” In the end the observer should get the feeling that “someone has taken me to the abyss, but he took me by the hand and led me away from it. I think that can be a function of art anyway.” Rosa Loy does not want to go that far: “I prefer to lead them around the abyss and far away. Because life is an abyss . . . and my intentions are rather that I attempt to see the positive side of these things in order to show how I can avoid wandering so close to the abyss at all.”

ROSA LOY Dampf, 2006 Kasein auf Leinen / casein on linen 170 x 130 cm Foto: Mischa Nawrata, Wien © VBK, Wien, 2011 bzw. VG Bildkunst Bonn, 2011	NEO RAUCH Rast, 1993 Öl auf Leinwand / oil on canvas 250 x 190 cm Foto: Uwe Walter, Berlin; courtesy Galerie EIGEN + ART Leipzig/Berlin und David Zwirner, New York © VBK, Wien, 2011 bzw. VG Bildkunst Bonn, 2011

IMAGE PUZZLES AS AN EXPRESSION OF WHAT CANNOT BE VERBALISED
The multilayered levels of meaning in the painting of Rosa Loy and Neo Rauch are produced by the combination of alien and simultaneously apparently familiar motifs, the sense of which can never be conclusively deciphered. To that extent Rosa Loy understands her paintings as an “offer” for the observer. Everyone should “take what is important for them” from her pictures, based on each person’s own horizon of experience and recognising that no definitive image statement can be fixed. Something similar is true for Neo Rauch: “There must always be a residue of the indecipherable, of what cannot be verbalised. So for me it is very much a case of laying a trail through the garden in the direction of the wilderness. But it is important that the trail gets lost behind the garden fence.” Thus the importance of basic principles of painting – colour and composition – always retain their priority over the narrative pictorial elements. Because, as Neo Rauch says, “the actual stories are told by the composition, the colouring, the application of paint . . . that is what painting tells us.”

Portrait Rosa Loy und Neo Rauch Foto: Barbara Klemm	NEO RAUCH Revo, 2010 Öl auf Leinwand / oil on canvas 300 x 500 cm Foto: Uwe Walter, Berlin; courtesy Galerie EIGEN + ART Leipzig/Berlin und David Zwirner, New York © VBK, Wien, 2011 bzw. VG Bildkunst Bonn, 2011

ROSA LOY (*1958, Zwickau)
Rosa Loy draws on mythological material in her paintings as well as on personal experiences and memories. The female figures in her paintings – often appearing as doppelgängers – as well as the often symbolically charged motif fragments evoke associations to the most varied times and spaces. They are envisioned in the picture surface and arranged in a space of simultaneity where they open up numerous horizons of meaning, and above all, however, challenge one to think about the role models of women in the present and the past: “By painting women and concerning myself with them I am supporting them, and they can become stronger.”


NEO RAUCH (*1960, Leipzig)
Neo Rauch’s painting understands itself as an allegoric approach to the content of collective memory. Motifs and signs, like fragmentary traces of the past, are related to one another at the pictorial level and trigger many associations. “The suggestiveness of the image,” Neo Rauch emphasises, “should be created in such a way that I as the observer must be endeavouring to rummage around in my memory box that is throbbing with déjà-vu.” Despite the immobilisation that the medium of painting achieves, the often darkly disturbing stagings of his paintings are characterised by a powerful inner movement and tension. “The basic character of painting to which we have dedicated ourselves consists in the fact that one pronounces or casts a spell on a particular situation. . . . That is, I quieten a situation down, which depending on its characteristics may be unpleasant or threatening. . . . That is the enormous potential of painting, that I can paint something evil or something bad by producing an extremely vital piece of painting. Painting triumphs of what it devotes itself to.”

ROSA LOY Pflug, 2010 Kasein auf Leinwand / casein on linen 220 x 180 cm Courtesy Rosa Loy Foto: Uwe Walter, Berlin; courtesy Michael Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles © VBK, Wien, 2011	NEO RAUCH Unschuld, 2001 Öl auf Leinwand / oil on canvas 298 x 200 cm Sammlung Deutsche Bank Foto: Uwe Walter, Berlin; courtesy Galerie EIGEN + ART Leipzig/Berlin und David Zwirner, New York © VBK, Wien, 2011 bzw. VG Bildkunst Bonn, 2011

Catalogue

The exhibition will be accompanied by a 260-page catalogue published by Prestel, including an interview with Rosa Loy and Neo Rauch conducted by Günther Oberhollenzer, contributions by Tilo Baumgärtel (Leipzig artist), Prof. Karlheinz Essl and Bernhart Schwenk (curator of Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich). The catalogue is produced in close co-operation with Rosa Loy and Neo Rauch.

Art Education

The art education team offers tours and workshops for the exhibition. The current event calendar can be found under ART EDUCATION >>

Free shuttle bus

Visitors can reach the Essl Museum conveniently by free bus shuttle from Vienna city centre, Albertinaplatz 2 (Tues – Sun, 10 a.m., 12 a.m., 2 p.m., 4 p.m. and return)

Press photos

Press photos are available upon request at the Press Office or via download from PRESSE >>

PRESS AND PUBLIC RELATIONS OFFICE

Erwin Uhrmann (head), uhrmann@essl.museum, +43 (0) 2243/370 50 60
Regina Holler-Strobl, holler-strobl@essl.museum, +43 (0) 2243/370 50 62