The Milk of Dreams
April 23–November 27, 2022
Galerie Hubert Winter is very pleased to announce the forthcoming participation of Birgit Jürgenssen in the upcoming 59th Venice Biennale. The exhibition titled The Milk of Dreams—curated by Cecilia Alemani—will be held from April 23 to November 27, 2022.
Birgit Jürgenssen’s oeuvre will be presented in the context of the Biennale’s “guiding questions […], which focus on three themes in particular: the representation of bodies and their metamorphoses; the relationship between individuals and technologies; the connection between bodies and the earth.” [1]
The female body is the focal point of Birgit Jürgenssen’s work. Her realist-style drawings portray her surrounding world with considerable self-irony. Birgit Jürgenssen reflected on and deconstructed human relationships, sexuality, socially determined notions of beauty and gender relations with a subversive humor as if they were deeper layers of her own identity.
In keeping with the social turmoil in the 1970s Birgit Jürgenssen responded perceptively and critically to an increasingly industrialized and thus ‘demystified’ environment, and equally guided by instinct and sensitivity marked out affinities between all kinds of beings. Playfully following the legacy of the Surrealists, she fused human bodies, animals, and plants into dreamlike hybrids. Her work is characterized by a vigorous fantasy in the face of nature and testifies to an integral awareness that we exist in an invisible interaction with the world around us.
Birgit Jürgenssen (born Vienna, Austria, 1949; died Vienna, Austria, 2003) began her artistic career in 1968 studying at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna, where she graduates in 1971. In 1982 Birgit Jürgenssen starts her teaching activity in the master class of Arnulf Rainer at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. She initiates and establishes the education for the subject photography and teaches there for more than 20 years.
“It is personal achievements that count. In the end, there are only good drawings, good photos, good pieces of work.” —Birgit Jürgenssen
The Estate of Birgit Jürgenssen is represented by Galerie Hubert Winter, Vienna. Partner galleries: Alison Jacques Gallery, London; Fergus McCaffrey, New York and Barbara Gladstone, New York.
[1] See statement by Cecilia Alemani—Curator of the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, here.
