THOMAS REINHOLD
WINNER OF THE 2022 APPRECIATION AWARD OF THE STATE OF LOWER AUSTRIA
03.12.2022-16.04.2023
Awarded since 1960, the Culture Awards of the State of Lower Austria recognize major achievements and initiatives. Appreciation and Recognition Awards are awarded annually in a variety of categories. This range reflects the entirety of artistic creation in Lower Austria and demonstrates how many individuals are locally committed to promoting and preserving art.
The State Gallery of Lower Austria is the centre and home for fine artists from Lower Austria. From autumn 2022 onwards, the winners of the Culture Prize of Lower Austria will be presented as fixed annual programme positions. Works by the winners of the Appreciation Awards in the category Fine Art.
THOMAS REINHOLD AWARDED WITH THE 2022 APPRECIATION AWARD
The 2022 appreciation award goes to the artist Thomas Reinhold, born in Vienna in 1953. Over many years, he has created a stringent painterly oeuvre. In its consistent abstraction, harmonious use of color and formal language, it is characterized by an unmistakable artistic signature.
Reinhold distributes the self-mixed colors on the canvas in complex, meticulously arranged pouring processes. Between planning and intuition, finely superimposed layers of paint are created, with dense areas but also empty spaces, with transparent areas of color but also thin traces of guttering, with boldly luminous but also discreetly delicate coloring. The dynamic process of creation is inscribed in the finished, static painting, which the viewer can follow in its temporal and spatial dimensions.
What Reinhold depicts is not an image of the world, but a composition that finds its meaning in the painterly order of the painting. His art is self-referential, purist, reduced to the essential. Nothing distracts from the purely painterly.
The exhibition provides a diverse insight into the work of the winner of the Culture Prize in recent years. New, never before shown works directly from the artist's studio are also on display.
Curators: Günther Oberhollenzer, Gerda Ridler