"Trapped in sexism?! Or perhaps even a facet of human interaction?"

Gabriele Scharmer in dialogue with VALIE EXPORT: "Time for a new femininity"

"Time for a new femininity" (© Gabriele Scharmer)

Vienna (ptp005/09.08.2026/20:55)

Gabriele Scharmer – "3 Positions of the Women's Era" in Dialogue with VALIE EXPORT. Austrian artist Gabriele Scharmer, born in 1962 in Eisenstadt, presents her new body of work at Gallery Steiner as part of the exhibition "3 Positions of the Women's Era – in Dialogue with VALIE EXPORT". For many years, Scharmer has been developing a distinctive visual language situated between abstraction and figuration, characterized by multilayered color spaces, sculptural structures made of bitumen and sand, and a precise, almost drawing‑like line.

A central motif in her artistic practice is the idea of resonance: art should reveal what already exists within the viewer. Her works function like energetic fields that activate inner images, sensations, and memories. This approach also shapes her current artistic development, informed by material experimentation, intuitive color fields, and the observation of everyday situations. Her training includes numerous international instructors as well as the master class "Abstract" at Kunstfabrik Vienna.

In this exhibition, Scharmer explores new femininity in contrast to sexism. Female and male nudes enter into resonance with the viewer, opening a space in which corporeality is experienced not as an object but as a relationship. Particularly striking are the portraits of a woman executed in various techniques, each speaking its own quiet yet powerful language.

The dialogue with VALIE EXPORT emerges where Scharmer continues the discourse on self‑determination, the politics of the gaze, and bodily presence. While EXPORT liberated the female body from its passive role and transformed it into a medium of artistic self‑assertion, Scharmer translates these ideas into painterly form: resonance instead of representation, energy instead of depiction, freedom instead of definition.

The exhibition presents a position within contemporary feminist art that is not agitationally loud but profound and sensuous. Scharmer's works articulate a right to self‑definition—for women as well as men—and open a space in which vulnerability and strength, resistance and desire, closeness and distance can coexist.

Location
Gallery Steiner, Vienna

Opening
20 August 2026, 7pm

Aussender:	Blue-Romus-Project GmbH
Ansprechpartner:	ART Presse Mikizzaner
Tel.:	+43 664 88 90 79 99
E-Mail:	presse@mikizzaner.at
Website:	www.mikizzaner.at