The artist uses the scribbles created by their authors as they test products in stationery shops or artists materials suppliers to compose a form of fragmentary fresco or painted graffiti, in which the gesture of writing and the ductus of painting is still clearly legible.
The result is a series of lines, stripes and surfaces that is precisely matched with the space and the format of the Artstripe and which, for all its calculation, is shaped by the vitality of the unintentional, spontaneous and coincidental quality of the originals.
In a place so focussed on rationality and method as the “Vienna Office” of Accenture, “Out of Office” thus provides not only a conscious contrast but also an elegant act of subversion.
Charlotte Klobassa was born in Vienna, where she first studied fashion under Veronique Branquinho and Bernhard Willhelm and then painting and animated film under Judith Eisler, all at the University of Applied Arts. Since completing her diploma in 2017 she has lived and worked in Vienna and Berlin.
Irony and levity, coincidence and calculation, richness of allusion and technical meticulousness as well as a clear readiness to be decorative are central features of the pictorial compositions of Charlotte Klobassa, which often appear as series. Her works combine such ingredients as motifs from gestural painting and elements of collage as well as echoes of such traditions as ecriture automatique, the objet trouvé and Pop Art to form manifestations of a cheerful, lucid hedonism.
In this work, these motifs are based on found, anonymous models whose creation was quite free of artistic intention. Hence, the artist plays with not only the individual pictorial elements but also her own role. In an age of universal media-based reproducibility, Charlotte Klobassa succeeds in celebrating the medium of painting with a sense of delight while creating images that are also suitable for use on Instagram.
Charlotte Klobassa has been represented by the Vienna gallery Zeller van Almsick since its founding in 2017.
