Biography
Margret Kohler-Heilingsetzer is an Austrian artist working in different projects with print-graphic, drawing, mixed media, photography, installation and terracotta.
Since the 1990s, the artist, inspired by several visits to Mexico and Peru, has been studying non-European indigenous cultures, which influenced her graphic work and animated her to create small terracotta heads – an ongoing project since the year 2000.
Her fascination with the sea, with beaches and tides, captured in photographs and graphics, led Margret Kohler-Heilingsetzer to the coasts of Spain, Mexico, Australia and, above all, Italy, where she was exposed to the fate of ‘boat people’, migration and asylum policy.
Margret Kohler-Heilingsetzer studied graphic/printmaking art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and specialized in etching. In the 1990s she used increasingly analogue black&white photography, photoalugraphies and explored experimental printing. Since 2006, the artist has been using digital photography as a basis for prints on offset plates, performing exposure and printing herself. This process is important for Margret Kohler-Heilingsetzer, as it often leads her to new ideas.
Margret Kohler-Heilingsetzer recent prints develop from black&white photographs of her terra-cotta heads, photographs of the beach, ebbs, footprints and sand drawings, as well as from print media and internet. She transforms such images, fragmented or altered, into offset symmetry prints since 2009, parallel to her work with terracotta heads.
Born in Vienna
Studied graphic art at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (master class with professor Max Melcher) and at the University of Vienna
Teaching activities until 2003, contact person for culture
Lives and works in Vienna (studio with gravure printing press) and Zell am Moos, Upper Austria (ceramics studio)
1992/96/98, 2001 visits and stays in Mexico, 1997 in Peru (studies of pre-Columbian cultures of Central and South America)
Member of the Austrian Artists’ Society Künstlerhaus Vienna and IntAkt (International Association of female artists.
Curator/Organizer: 2011 “Untragbar”KünstlerhausGschnas, 2013 Maria Biljan-Bilger, anniversary, exhibition and symposium, 2017 Project “The Better Life / Das Bessere Leben, k-haus1050 Wien
ONGOING PROJECTS
2000 – work in progress ”volksgarten-project/cold spell, publication “Kälteeinbruch”2006
2006 – First presentation “ Kälteeinbruch“,Theseustempel, Volksgarten Wien
2006 – Boatpeople – ongoing project since 2006, Boat installations with hundreds of terracottes, photographs, prints.
Boatpeople-installations: 2006 Künstlerhaus Vienna/AT, 2007 Galerie Gmünd/Ktn/AT und Galerie Judith Walker, Ktn./AT, 2008 Kammerhofmuseen Gmunden/AT, 2010 Ursulinenhof Linz/AT, 2010 participation in ‚aquamediale 6‘ Lübben/ D, 2011 Urbania /IT, 2011 Arenas de San Pedro/E, 2013 Installation in the Teatro del Trionfo, Cartoceto/IT, 2015 projection in the Willner Brauerei Berlin, 2017 The Better Life, Künstlerhaus Vienna/AT