Jakob Lena Knebl & Ashley Hans Scheirl: Seasonal Greetings

The artist duo Jakob Lena Knebl and Ashley Hans Scheirl are a couple both privately and artistically, feminist and queer. At Kunsthaus Bregenz, the artists based in Vienna are staging two floors together and one each on their own. At a photographic session at Kunsthaus Bregenz, they presented themselves in differing poses, sometimes colorful and frivolous, sometimes distinguished and thoughtful, and then again lascivious and provocative—never without style or without humor, in a manner comparable to the British artist duo Gilbert & George. The camera is a co-protagonist, the changing of roles and genres is more than an attitude, it is the work itself. Serious reflection, scenes, and the obscene collide unchecked.

Ashley Hans Scheirl exhibits spatially extensive stages. Paintings on the floor are carried out employing violent gesture, drawings on the wall and text resembling slogans. Scheirl’s work includes golden penises and dolls dangling from the wall, red catwalks and curtains, sophisticated bachelor machines, sensuality, surreal elements, suspenders and suspenseful shame, allusions to Klimt, and the glamor of the 1970s. The transgender artist Scheirl began his career making avant-garde films, Dandy Dust from 1998 since obtaining cult-status. Scheirl who later became known for performance, has been teaching contextual painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna since 2006. She is currently addressing issues of the limits of genre, conventional morally strict attitudes, and the assignment of gender, in expansive paintings.

Jakob Lena Knebl’s art is no less garish and shrill. She is interested in design, and in particular the design of furniture and the extravagances of fashion. She portrays herself in staged photographs, the selfie becoming a farcical métier, the doll a paradigm, and desire her subject matter. Knebl uproots artistic identity employing mimicry and pose. She paints herself as a Chippendale sofa or becomes a full-body Mondrian. She is also active as a curator, re-presenting museum collections, for example those of mumok in Vienna and Kunsthaus Zürich, and reinterpreting the works in a surprising manner by adding accessories or items of clothing. She names such appropriations “co-agency.”

Biography

Ashley Hans Scheirl (born in 1956 in Salzburg) lives and works in Vienna, where he has been professor of contextual painting at the Academy of Fine Arts since 2006. Ashley Hans Scheirl, aka. Angela Scheirl and Hans Angela Scheirl, is a transgender painter as well as a conceptual, mixed-media, performance, body art, and video artist. Scheirl studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, and subsequently at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London. In 2017 she participated in documenta 14 in Athens and Kassel with a series of surrealist paintings.

Jakob Lena Knebl (born in 1970 in Baden near Vienna as Martina Egger) lives and works in Vienna. She studied textual sculpture under Heimo Zobernig at the Academy of Fine Arts and fashion under Raf Simons at the University of Applied Arts, both in Vienna. She is, in addition, a Senior Artist at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. Several years ago she replaced her given name with the first names of her grandparents, in the spirit of her play on identity and gender, giving herself the surname Knebl. In 2017 she showed a selection of the collection at mumok in Vienna under the title Oh… Jakob Lena Knebl und die mumok Sammlung. Further solo exhibitions include ones at Kunstmuseum Lentos, Linz (2020), Belmazc Gallery, London (2019), and the Loevenbruck Gallery, Paris (2019).

Both artists work individually as well as together and are representing Austria as a duo at the Venice Biennial in 2022.