The artist talk between art historian Victoria Dejaco and artist Doris Piwonka will take place on the occasion of the catalog launch, featuring the artist.

"In her paintings, Doris Piwonka undertakes a 'semiological adventure.' Piwonka's works evade, to some extent, an all knowing all deciphering reading, for her work, even in its reduction, offers resistance, remains excessive—as is the fundamental fate of painting. Piwonka operates within an oscillating space, an espace intertitiel as phrased by Marin or, to close with Till Bardoux and Michael Heitz in reference to Marin, 'Textuality had moved away from the surface of the painting, with texture we return to it. However, it seems as if the surface has also been intrinsically everted, transformed through this back and forth motion between seeing and thinking. It no longer lets itself simply be set against a background. It remains translucent into its depth and at the same time opaque. A quasi-space such as this is able to open up between two surfaces, canvas and ground, which is perhaps only thinkable and expressible in paradoxes ('translucent density'). Every decision for only one of the possible ways of approaching an image—referential illusion or pictorial abstraction—must remain in limbo; the dualisms (illusionistic depth of the perspectival space vs. sensual experiential materiality, or the wealth of senses vs. the flatness of surface lines) creates space for a possible shift into a realm of possibilities.' Perhaps Piwonka relates with de Kooning, who thought that he must deny himself a 'style' because to him, 'style' seemed like a bourgeois and therefore uncontemporary convention."

(Excerpt from Sabine Folie: Figur und Grund - Grund und Figur)

Doris Piwonka, born 1968 in Judenburg, studied at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Wien with Prof. Gunter Damisch. Her works have been shown in various exhibitions, including: TYPE, PLEASE curated by Sabine Folie, Galerie Raum mit Licht, Wien; Doris Piwonka, Künstlerhaus, Halle für Kunst und Medien, Graz (2013), Abstraktion und Subtraktion, ehem. Galerie Lisa Ruyter, Wien (2012); Georg-Eisler-Preis 2010, Ausstellung der nominierten Künstler/-innen, Bank Austria Kunstforum, Wien (2010); Concetti di pittura, ar/ge kunst Galleria Museo, Bolzano (2006); Ausstellung zum Förderungspreis des Landes Steiermark für zeitgenössische bildende Kunst, Neue Galerie Graz (1999).

Victoria Dejaco works as an independent curator. She has realized multiple projects and exhibitions in Austria, Italy, Switzerland, Bulgaria and Poland, and was the director of Hallway Gallery in Vienna (2011–2013). From 2012–2014 she was the galerie assistant at Galerie Emanuel Layr. In 2013 she moved to Graz, taking up a position as curatorial assistant at the Kunstverein Graz.