Horáková / Maurer, »Face with Tears of Joy«, 2026

Horáková / Maurer
Fotografie \

>Opens Thursday, 16.04.26, 7 pm
>Exhibition run: 17.04.−03.06.26

FOTOHOF | Inge-Morath-Platz 2 | 5020 Salzburg | Österreich

The work of Tamara Horáková and Ewald Maurer exemplifies the developments that led to the establishment of photography as an artistic medium in the 1980s. Their early work is characterized by large-format canvases coated with liquid light, site-specific installations, and a media-critical reflection on political events. Central to their work are their contributions to conceptual and abstract photography, to the theoretical discourse on the “basics” of the medium, and their interpretation of the digital and analog characteristics of imaging processes. Their comprehensive and, in terms of its materiality, “opulent” work (Werner Fenz) has received numerous awards, been exhibited, published, and collected. At FOTOHOF, Horáková and Maurer take us on a journey through the history of the medium: from Daguerre's shoes to the era of high-tech laboratories shortly before their collapse to the look of the apps to which photography has shifted. 460 cm “Russian Ice” stands for the Russian invasion, and the “Face with Tears of Joy” mocks the essence of photography in the age of AI.

 

Tamara Horáková and Ewald Maurer (*1947 in Havl. Brod/CSSR and Fürstenfeld/A, respectively), Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, live in Vienna and Nový Studenec.

Michaela Moscouw, »Pizza«, 2019

Michaela Moscouw

>Opens Thursday, 16.04.26, 7 pm
>Exhibition run: 17.04.−03.06.26

FOTOHOF>STUDIO | Inge-Morath-Platz 2 | 5020 Salzburg | Österreich

The work of Austrian artist Michaela Moscouw, created since the early 1980s, is considered to be unaffected by contemporary trends and radically independent. Looking at the parts of her oeuvre held in the FOTOHOF>ARCHIV, a surprising and, from a conservationist's point of view, peculiar mixture becomes apparent. The group of works “Aus der präparierten Dunkelkammer” (From the Prepared Darkroom, 2016), created during a working stay in Salzburg, was initially incorporated into the FOTOHOF>ARCHIV collection, but was later reclaimed by the artist for further processing. Together with other parts of her photographic work, it was transformed into so-called “Pizzas” (2019). On these flat worlds, each 160 cm in diameter, Michaela Moscouw's works from the past three to four decades meet illustrations from the publication “Wien und ein Blick in die Alpengaue” (Vienna and a View of the Alpine Meadows, 1941). The collaging, gluing, mixing, and superimposing of the images opens a wide field of provocative political, perhaps sarcastic, but certainly completely ambiguous interpretations. Pictorial upheavals take place in the paper dough of the pizza, driven not by a desire for clear statements. Rather, their enormous energy seems to stem from a process of condensation, released by the artist's maltreating approach to her images.

 

Michaela Moscouw (*1961, Vienna) lives in Vienna.