Elisabeth Oberrauch

Elisabeth Oberrauch was born 1950 in Merano, Italy where she works and lives with her family. She studied the masterclass of painting from 1971-1972, in Graz, Austria, participated at the international summer academy in Salzburg, Austria and did the academy for graphic arts in Venice, Italy 1990-1992.

She has been represented in a large number of individual and group exhibitions locally and internationally for over 40 years and has been organizing interdisciplinary working weeks in St. Konstantin, Völs as advanced training for visual artists, musicians and landscape designers since 2005.

In the selection of works shown at the Aurora Hotel premises the artist avoids the object as a pictorial motif on her flat, precisely held canvases and, in contrast to her travel diaries, opts for the expressiveness of pure painting. For a painting that is shaped in equal parts by the impressions of what is seen, for example the eye, and memories. Fragments of naturalistic details can still be recognized, but these are mixed with the abstract and poetic. The artist sets vegetative forms and signs in the atmospheric colored surfaces, dominated by warm earth tones; There is a marriage of line and surface, of gesture and painting. Image titles with associations such as “Saikung”, “Arkadia”, “Monogramm” or “Waterfall” facilitate the access and connection for the visitor and provide information about what is not – visible on the first hand.

The digitally overloaded present with endless blogs and loads of photos uploaded to the Internet in real time is contrasting, tho the approach of Elisabeth Oberrauch, whose sensual materiality sets a strong antithesis to inflationary digital reporting. The artist has a long tradition with her travel books as she has been traveling the world for 25 years and every time takes a book, which is elaborately hand-bound with special papers, with her. She will fill the unique „diary”with her impressions in the course of the trip: sketches, watercolors, drawings, found objects. Since the Renaissance, sketches and impressions of foreign countries have appeared in art and science, adventurers and discoverers supplemented their diaries with pictures and drawings.

Oberrauch’s books, each of a unique character, contain a total of more than 1000 pictures, none of which have been revised. Each of these books breathes the spirit of the immediate and the atmosphere of the travel destination, be it through picked-up ornaments, the predominant color scheme or the found objects kept in small transparent bags. Turquoise is the color of Asia, India in shining blossoms. When leafing through the volumes, the viewer reveals not only the visual but also a haptic-material level.

During the exhibition at the Aurora hotel the artist will scroll trough her books and visitors will be given the opportunity to touch and feel them first hand.

This space is dedicated to showcasing contemporary artistic perspectives, offering both local and international artists the opportunity to exhibit their work through a hybrid format: an online virtual gallery alongside a physical exhibition space located within Aurora.