Xenia Hausner was born into a family of artists. Her father was the Austrian painter Rudolf Hausner, her sisters are the filmmaker Jessica and the costume designer Tanja Hausner. From 1972 to 1976, she studied stage design at the Academy of Arts in Vienna and at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. From 1977-1992, she designed sets for theater and opera at the Burgtheater in Vienna, Covent Garden in London, Theâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels etc. Since 1992, Xenia Hausner has been working exclusively as a painter and has participated in innumerable exhibitions at home and abroad. She lives and works in Berlin and Vienna.
Stage sets
Her first stage sets were collages built from material collected from condemned houses, junk yards and garbage dumps. She used this raw material to assemble a theatrical space that sprung to life in the clash between naturalistic clarity and abstract interpretation.
Painting
As of 1990 Xenia Hausner began concentrating on painting. People are at the center of her focus. Her images are enigmatic, the situations she depicts ambiguous. Xenia Hausner’s large-formatted works are societal descriptions, the situations purposely fragmentary, snapshots from daily life. In contrast to the classical portrait, the characters in her images play the roles of people other than themselves. They are cast like actors in a play. Her style is expressive and her palette brims over with strong colors, a fact that is apparent in the flesh tones of her protagonists. Xenia Hausner works on paper and mixed-media as well. She transforms large-formatted photos into paintings, incorporating various materials depending on the specific medium she is working in. In this way, painting and photography merge, are transported to the limits of current artistic awareness. Using a variety of techniques, she concentrates images and constructs a new reality. Producing special edition art works on hand-made paper has become a new field of experimentation for Hausner. These unique limited editions deal with subjects known from her paintings, but the images are reinvented through technique and the medium and evolve into an independent artistic form. While preparing for her exhibition, "Damage", at the Shanghai Art Museum in 2011, she became intensively interested in Asiatic, especially Chinese motifs and began incorporating them into her personal artistic DNA: clear evidence of the global networking in contemporary art.
Projects
She is active in the "Women without Borders" movement and its project SAVE (Sisters Against Violent Extremism), that focuses on the world, especially on people in extreme situations. She is strongly interested in architectural projects, for example the mantling of the Ringturm in Vienna in 2011, or in designing church windows (Kilian Church in Heilbronn, St. Johannis Church in Gehrden, St. Johannes and St. Laurentius Cathedral in Merseburg).
Notable exhibitions
A selection
2017 „Glasstress“, Palazzo Franchetti, Venice
2017 “Xenia Hausner – Exiles” in Personal Structures: Crossing Borders, Palazzo Bembo, Venice
2017 „Entfesselt. Malerinnen der Gegenwart“, Schloss Achberg, Germany
2017 „Fleischeslust“, Galerie Deschler, Berlin
2017 „Modern & Contemporary Art“, Forum Gallery, New York
2017 „10 – Alive and Kicking“, Dominik Mersch Gallery, Sydney
2017 „Menagerie. An Animal Show from the Würth Collection“, Forum Würth Rorschach, CH
2016 “Frau im Bild – Female Portraits from the Würth Collection”, Gallery Würth, Oslo
2016 “Rendezvous, Meisterwerke aus der Sammlung Essl”, Essl Museum, Klosterneuburg
2015: "From Hockney to Holbein. The Würth Collection in Berlin", Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin
2015: "Personal Structures: Crossing Borders", Palazzo Mora, Venice
2015: "Soft Power", Leo Gallery, Shanghai
2015: "Girl, Girls, Girls", Galerie Deschler, Berlin
1998: "Xenia Hausner – Love Fragments", Jesuitenkirche Galerie in Aschaffenburg
1997: "Xenia Hausner – Love Fragments", Kunsthalle Vienna und Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig
1997: "Contemporary Art in Austria", Europäisches Währungsinstitut, Frankfurt am Main
1996: "Die Kraft der Bilder", Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin
1996: "The Power of Images", Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin
1996: "Human Pictures", Galerie Thomas, Munich
1996: "Masterpieces of Austrian ContemporaryArt", Galerie Heike Curtze, Salzburg
Film
Arte, Metropolis: Stories of Loneliness and Closeness – Visiting Xenia Hausner in her studio in Vienna, broadcast January 26, 2013 at 4:45 P.M.
3sat, Culture Time: Harald Wilde, Grand Dame of portrait painting – Xenia Hausner at the Essl-Museum in Kosterneuburg, October 24, 2012.1
Arte, Metropolis: The artist Xenia Hausner, first broadcast, October 11, 2003.
Public collections
Essl Museum Klosterneuburg
Albertina
Museum Würth
Batliner Foundation
Wien Museum
European Central Bank
Museum Angerlehner
The George Economou Collection
First Art Foundation
Seven Bridges Foundation
Shanghai Art Museum
Literature
"Xenia Hausner: Look Left – Look Right." Brandstätter Verlag, 2014, ISBN 978-3-85033-841-7
"ÜberLeben". Brandstätter Verlag, Wien 2012. ISBN 978-3-85033-715-1
"Flagrant délit". Swiridoff Verlag 2012. ISBN 978-3-89929-242-8
"Damage". Hirmer Verlag 2011. ISBN 978-3-7774-4281-5
"You and I". Prestel Verlag, München 2008. ISBN 978-3-7913-4106-4
"Two". Galerie von Braunbehrens, München 2007. ISBN 3-922268-47-1
GlücksFall. Prestel Verlag, München 2005. ISBN 3-7913-3621-5
Damenwahl- Berichte aus dem Labor, mit Beiträgen von André Heller, Elfriede Jelinek und Peter Weiermair, deutsch/englisch, Übersetzung von P. J. Blumenthal und Allison Brown, Wienand Verlag, Köln 2003. ISBN 3-87909-824-7
Global Art Affairs Foundation: "Personal Structures – Crossing Borders". European Cultural Centre, Venice 2015, ISBN 978-94-90784-18-8
Die andere Sicht. Sammlerin und Künstlerin. Edition Sammlung Essl, 2014, ISBN 978-3-902001-81-8
Elfriede Jelinek: Werk und Rezeption. Diskurse. Kontexte. Impulse. Publikationen des Elfriede Jelinek-Forschungszentrums. Pia Janke (Hg.) 2014, 2 Teilbände
Sie. Selbst. Nackt. Paula Modersohn-Becker und andere Künstlerinnen im Selbstakt. Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2013, ISBN 978-3-7757-3664-0
Dieter Wellershoff: "Was die Bilder erzählen. Ein Rundgang durch mein imaginäres Museum". Kiepenheuer & Witsch Verlag, 2013, ISBN 978-3-462-04555-0
A.E.I.O.U. Österreichische Aspekte in der Sammlung Würth. Swirdoff Verlag, 2013, ISBN 978-3-89929-272-5
Museum Angerlehner. Hirmer Verlag, Munich, ISBN 978-3-7774-2130-8
Holger Brülls: "Zeitgenössische Glasmalerei in Deutschland". Centre International du Vitrail, Chartres 2012, ISBN 978-2-908077-06-3
Burkhard Leismann und Martina Padberg (Hg.): Intimacy! Baden in der Kunst. Kunstmuseum Ahlen, 2010, ISBN 978-3-86832-020-6
Hans-Peter Wipplinger: "Sehnsucht nach dem Abbild. Das Portrait im Wandel der Zeit" Kunsthalle Krems, 2009, ISBN 978-3-901261-43-5
Christiane Lange/Florian Matzner (Hg.): Zurück zur Figur. Malerei der Gegenwart, Prestel Verlag Munich, 2006
Österreich: 1900 – 2000. Konfrontation und Kontinuitäten. Edition Sammlung Essl, 2005 ISBN 3-902001-27-5
