Thaddaeus Ropac has added Austrian artist Florentina Holzinger to its artist roster.
The artist, who will represent Austria at the Venice Biennale later this year, is known for her subversive performances that fuse dance, opera, and visual arts. Her art is physically demanding and often includes live piercings, explicit sex, blood, and professional-level stunts.
This is Holzinger’s first gallery representation, and, according to Ropac, her work with the gallery will bring a heightened focus to the visual aspects of her practice.
“Florentina's work has an unmistakable, singular aesthetic. She continually challenges conventions with her genre-defying practice, meticulously layering ideas, narratives, and radical techniques to address the most urgent subjects of our time,” said Thaddaeus Ropac in a statement. “Her practice establishes new ways of working with the body, as subject and medium and as a means of agency. The objects she creates are an extension of the physical possibilities of the body—whether presented to us in her choreography, opera, performance, or visual art.”
At the upcoming Venice Biennale, which opens in May, Holzinger will present a piece titled “Seaworld Venice,” curated by Nora Swantje Almes. The work will investigate water as a resource and a subject, and explore the city of Venice’s precarious relationship with it. “Seaworld Venice” will build upon themes previously interrogated in her work, Ophelia’s Got Talent, which debuted at the Berlin Volksbühne in 2022. This presentation will coincide with the release of her first major publication, a monographic work titled HOLZINGER, by Gropius Bau Berlin and Kunsthalle Wien.
“My work thrives on navigating or surfing between genres,” said Holzinger in a statement. “It looks for different contexts to exist within and explores questions of who belongs in which space, who belongs on which stage, and who belongs in which gallery. These are all things that I'm very playful with.
“What's important for me is that I'm questioning the conventions and conditions of these places. In the theater, usually there’s a fixed spectatorship; in a gallery space, you have a mobile spectatorship where the audience can determine how long they want to engage with the work. To go into a new space means challenging the different habits and conditions of that place, and the different types of expectations. To be in a visual arts context is for me a matter of taking on another space and is a particular inspiration for my work.”
Holzinger’s work has earned her the Nestroy and Faust awards in 2020 and 2023, respectively. A dominant star in contemporary performance, the Guardian heralded her as “Europe’s hottest director” for her productions that routinely sell out. Last summer, tickets for her performance of A Year without Summer at the Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz in Berlin sold out within minutes of its announcement.
Holzinger is also the creator of Études, an ongoing series of site-specific, singular performances that employ architecture, bodies, and sound. These performances serve as an experimental playground, and have taken place in settings ranging from parking lots, lakes, streets, and public squares.
