Kamilla Bischof

Kamilla Bischof is an Austrian painter living and working in Berlin. She produces large format, narrative and symbolist paintings using oil and acrylic techniques. She is also a writer, which is often reflected in her painting — although full of figurative symbols, figures, characters and objects, it remains in constant dialogue with the abstract play of surfaces in expressive colours. Thus, the pictures take on an allegorical-surrealistic form and escape straightforward interpretations. The exhibition presents two paintings depicting couples of women in ethically ambiguous circumstances. ‘Showgirls’ depicts two performers struggling against each other in a murderous embrace. Thanks to her expressive line and intensive palette of colours, the artist achieves the effect of movement, escalation, and struggle. One does not know what the subject of the confrontation or what the outcome of the clash might be. The canvas entitled, ‘Medusa Montage’, achieves a similar impression of female sadism. Despite the fairy tale-like, pink colour scheme, the painting is rife with tension and perverse pleasure resulting from the eponymous ‘montage’, performed by two devils armed with sharp tools. The painter experiments with the extremes of feelings and connotations evoked by the certain forms of expression and themes explored in her paintings: she toys with the myth of monstrous femininity, symbolized by Gorgon, as well as the possibility of constructing (montage) of one’s identity through art and acts of imagination.