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FindArticles </> > Art in America </p/articles/mi_m1248> > Feb, 2004
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*Constanze Schweiger at Priska C. Juschka*

Carey Lovelace

In a series called "Friends," Constanze Schweiger creates a nexus of
invisible links between herself, other people, photographs and abstract
paintings. The young Viennese artist pairs photo portraits of friends
with geometric abstractions, all 20 by 20 inches. The latter are also
portraits of a sort since, according to gallery information, Schweiger
represents other friends by enlarging some detail in their lives (the
pattern of a favorite shirt, a blanket in a studio). In Karolyn and
Lotte (2002), "Karolyn," a dark-haired woman, gazes out with a
world-weary expression, while "Lotte," next to her, consists of four
horizontal red bars alternating with sequentially lighter browns. The
red elements, furthermore, mirror Karolyn's red sweater and the browns
match her hair and eyes. The "Lotte" painting can also be seen in the
background of the "Karolyn" photograph.

Likewise, in Cosimo, Haruko and Robin (2003), a fresh-faced Asian woman
("Haruko") is flanked by the painting "Cosimo," a grid of lavender and
plum, and by "Robin," in which verticals of varying greens match the
white and clover green of Haruko's shirt. Blurrily visible in the studio
setting behind Haruko are small purple squares on the wall that might be
the source of the "Cosimo" grid.

From the "Doppelgangers" series, Schweiger presented three dramatic
photographs in larger format (48 by 60 inches). In each, two friends in
similar-color clothing stand looking out insouciantly. The slightly
rumpled-looking man and woman in Rosa (Ottonella and Nicola in pink),
2002, seem psychically unified by the identical deep rose of the woman's
short-sleeved T-shirt and the man's frilly bolero shirt, as well as by
their short brown hair and bluish eyes. Two pale, fair-haired women are
twinned in Mittelblau (Rebecca and Maja in blue), 2002.

Viewers might search these portraits for a psychological angle, but
Schweiger directs attention to the work's formal quotient and rivets it
there, even going so far as to bring some of these character studies
into the realm of nonobjective abstraction. In the most recent work,
Drei Farben Video 1 (2003), with motion now a factor, two women and a
man are stylishly dressed in red, white and black, respectively. They
adopt model-like poses, advance, retreat, pivot and exit in such a way
that a single figure (or "color," really) is foregrounded in turn to
dominate the others. The action mirrors the power dance in
relationships, but also brings to mind Hans Hofmann's painterly
"push-pull" theories. Schweiger punctures walls between genres, draws
abstraction from everyday life and shows how both friends and paintings
can be "of the same stripe."

COPYRIGHT 2004 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group