With the exhibition dedicated to Michael Kravagna and Rudolfine P. Rossmann, the MMKK presents the third project in the series "Doppelspiele der Malerei". In this series, different positions of current artistic creation are each presented in a juxtaposition of two different oeuvres in order to examine and emphasize the current scope and relevance of the medium of painting in a comparative examination.

Michael Kravagna and Rudolfine P. Rossmann were both born in Klagenfurt, the former in 1962 and the latter in 1958. Both studied painting at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. They then turned their gaze beyond the borders of the country and took steps that had a decisive influence on their artistic development. Michael Kravagna lived in Madrid for a year and then settled in Belgium in 1991, where he still lives and works today.

Michael Kravagna, o. T., 2021, oil, tempera and pigments on canvas, 160 x 160 cm, photo: Michael Kravagna

Rudolfine P. Rossmann repeatedly spent long periods abroad and intensively explored foreign landscapes and cultures. In the 1990s, she traveled to Southeast Asia and lived for several months in Bali and Sulawesi in Indonesia. In 2001 she worked in the Netherlands, and in 2002 in New Mexico and Arizona. From 2005 to 2006 she lived in Guangdong, China, in 2007 in Shanghai and in 2009 in Chennai, India. Today she lives in Vienna. The exhibition at the MMKK combines two exciting abstract artistic positions, both of which deal in different ways with the central pictorial questions of structure and space. Michael Kravagna builds his paintings with the help of impasto layers of paint, which he creates himself from luminous pigments, fillers and binders. The result is three-dimensional compositions, parallel to nature, which interact with the light to create impressive visual and tactile phenomena and lead to a dialog between reality and pictorial reality when viewed. Rudolfine P. Rossmann also works in layers, but starting from a few basic tones, they appear as wafer-thin and partially translucent layers, so that the pictorial space develops illusionarily and not concretely as in Michael Kravagna's work. In contrast to him, her work is not a constructive construction, but an intuitive drawing from a wealth of experience that is fed by an intensive perceptive faculty.
March 13 to August 31, 2025
https://mmkk.ktn.gv.at