Karin Mack

Karin Mack: Portrait of the Mirror (2017)

Karin Mack (born 1940 in Vienna ) is an Austrian photo artist . It belongs to the avant-garde feminist art of the 1970s.

Life

Karin Mack worked as an architecture photographer from 1967 to 1978 and then studied art history and Italian at the University of Vienna until 1988 . From 1977 to 1982 she was involved in the group "Intakt" (International Action Group for Women Artists) to improve the situation of women artists. In 1994 she moved to the Netherlands , where she lived until 2005. Since 2008 she has been a member of the Lower Austrian photo and media initiative Fluss and the Künstlerhaus Wien . She works as a freelance photo artist, author and curator in Vienna.

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Between 1975 and 1981 Karin Mack created photo montages of surreal self-portraits in black and white, with which she investigated the question of the self and female identity. Based on beautiful images of traditional female representation in advertising, her montages shook false promises. "Destruction of an Illusion" from 1977 is counted among the groundbreaking works of feminist photography of the seventies. Margit Zuckriegl, curator at the Museum der Moderne Salzburg , describes Karin Mack as one of the artists of the feminist avant-garde, “who generate their themes from a very personal introspection and stage them as if in a poetic theater of self-events”.

In the 1970s he also created intimate portraits of artists and members of the Vienna group , including Hermann Nitsch and Oswald Wiener . There are snapshots of happenings or in a private setting with which Karin Mack documented the art and culture scene in Vienna as a "participating observer" .

From the mid-1990s, she devoted herself to the relationship between man and nature in her photo series and montages.

Exhibitions (selection)

Solo exhibitions

• 1985: The self-portraits 1975–1985 , Photo Gallery Vienna
• 2007: Kunstwege '70. Photographs by Karin Mack , Wienmuseum (catalog)

Holdings

• 2004: Woman in the picture / opposing positions , Museum of Modern Art (Passau)
• 2008: Sound of Art , Museum der Moderne Salzburg
• 2008: IntAkt - The Pioneers , Work Show XIII, Photo Gallery Vienna
• 2012: Me, Myself and Them , group exhibition on the subject of self-portrait, Künstlerhaus Vienna
• 2012: On Screen - Current Photography from Austria , Fotohof Salzburg
• 2014: Experiment Analog. Photographic manuscripts in the digital age , Künstlerhaus Vienna
• 2015: Rabenmütter , Lentos Art Museum Linz
• 2015 to 2017: Feminist avant-garde of the 1970s. Works from the Verbund collection, Vienna. Hamburger Kunsthalle ; The Photographers' Gallery , London; Museum of Modern Art Ludwig Foundation Vienna
• 2018: THE 90S: Subversive Imaginations , Wien Museum Startgalerie Artothek (MUSA)
• 2018: Women House , National Museum of Women in the Arts (Washington)

Awards

• 2016: Prize of the City of Vienna for Fine Arts

Publications

• Free swimming. On the history of the International Action Group for Women Artists IntAkt , de'A Almhofer & Cie KG, Gumpoldskirchen 2011, ISBN 978-3-901867-30-9
• Nahe Ferne (illustrated book), Edition Fotohof, Volume 198, Salzburg 2014, ISBN 978-3-902675-98-9
• Cloud shadow / poet light. Thoughts on Iceland , Provincial Library , Weitra 2018, ISBN 978-3-99028-724-8

literature

• Margit Zuckriegl: Karin Mack. In the theater of self-events . In: Gabriele Schor (Ed.): Feminist Avantgarde. Art of the 1970s from the Verbund collection, Vienna , Prestel Verlag, Munich 2016, extended edition, ISBN 978-3-7913-5627-3 , pp. 123–130

Movie

• “She is the other look” , a portrait film by Christiana Perschon about five Austrian female artists of the feminist avant-garde of the 1970s who are now considered established: Renate Bertlmann , Linda Christanell , Iris Dostal , Lore Heuermann , Karin Mack and Margot Pilz . Production: Christiana Perschon 2018 (feature film, color and black / white, 88 minutes).

Web links

• Personal website
• Karin Mack on aspects of art
• Karin Mack, at: Photography Now

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Biography Karin Mack, in: Gabriele Schor (Ed.): Feministische Avantgarde. Art of the 1970s from the Verbund collection, Vienna , Prestel Verlag, Munich 2016, extended edition, ISBN 978-3-7913-5627-3 , p. 460
2. ↑ Priscilla Frank: 8 Radical, Feminist Artists From The 1970s Who Shattered The Male Gaze , The Huffingtonpost, October 24, 2016
3. ↑ Five Photographs That Formed the Feminist Avant-Garde , AnOther Magazine, October 5, 2016
4. ^ Margit Zuckriegl: Karin Mack. In the theater of self-events . In: Gabriele Schor (Ed.): Feminist Avantgarde. Art of the 1970s from the Verbund collection, Vienna, Prestel Verlag, Munich 2016, extended edition, ISBN 978-3-7913-5627-3 , p. 123
5. ↑ Kunstwege '70. Photographs by Karin Mack , October 17, 2007 to November 18, 2007, Wienmuseum.at ( Memento of the original from September 13, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
6. ↑ ^{a b c} Karin Mack: Exhibitions, Photogaphie Now
7. ↑ Der Standard, August 1, 2016
8. ↑ “She is the other view”, Viennale 2019
9. ↑ Dominik Kamalzadeh: "She is the other view": Austria's art pioneers in the service of freedom , Der Standard, May 7, 2019