how’s the surf?
MAY 28 > JUNE 03, 2025 I AUDITORIUM ATRIUM
Exhibition opening is on 28 th of May, 18:00 o’clock. The artist will be present. Markéta Zdeňková (Czech Republic) will give a short concert.
The exhibition how’s the surf in the auditorium atrium of Faculdade de Belas-Artes of Universidade de Lisboa starts within the artist’s body. Angelika Wienerroither paints how she feels while surfing the waves of Costa da Caparica, the waves of the Atlantic Ocean. Like the memories of her body — which are revisited, changing and layered like sediments —sheets of transparent paper are placed on top of each other, showing lines of ink. The blue ink is also used to colour sheets of raw paper, torn at the edges. The ink was diluted, the sheets painted over and over again.
The artists practice relates to autotheory, a term coined by Lauren Fournier in 2022. Autotheory means theorising through her own body, through her existence in this world in relation to existing theory. Her experience, her thoughts, her feelings are relevant – and where she is situated. As what she thinks depends on her position, her art changes when she is close to the sea. Angelika Wienerroither has chosen to paint on the pier, hearing the waves, breathing the salty air. She has to check the weather forecast — as she does for the surf — but she still gets caught in the rain, the wind blowing the paper over, the tide pushing in and flooding the pier. Her work is made by nature, not separated by it.
Angelika Wienerroither uses a gesture of calligraphy to paint her works. Her brushes are mounted on wooden sticks, the paper lies on the floor. She paints standing, developing a language for the feeling on the top of the wave, in perfect balance.
Angelika Wienerroither is a visual artist and writer from Austria. Her art and research oscillate around fluidity: she is drawn in by the not-yet-become, the metamorphosing, the not fixed. Her exhibitions and lectures create an open space for thinking; she gives impulses but doesn’t have the answers. Central in her practice is autotheory and the I: the knowledge of her body, her experience, her thinking and her memories are relevant. She theorises through her being in this world.
Currently, she is researching for her PhD at Kunstuniversität Linz what happens when she regards the world from a ship. She has studied painting and photography at Mozarteum University Salzburg, sociology at Karl-Franzens-University Graz, International Business at FH Joanneum Graz. She has exhibited internationally in galleries, museums and in abandoned buildings, e.g. the Austrian Cultural Forum Zagreb, the Museum of Modern Art Salzburg, Leopold Museum Vienna and an old worker’s house of a mill. Her exhibitions are walk-in utopias, a lived daydream; everything could still change.