Xenia Hausner

Xenia Hausner
Born	1951 (age 72–73) Vienna, Austria
Occupation(s)	Painter, stage designer

Xenia Hausner (born 1951 in Vienna) is an Austrian painter and stage designer.^[1]

Hausner was born into a family of artists. Her father was the Austrian painter Rudolf Hausner.

From 1972 to 1976, she studied stage design at the Academy of Arts in Vienna and at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. From 1977 to 1992, she designed sets for theatre, opera and film at the Burgtheater in Vienna, Salzburg Festival, Royal Opera House Covent Garden in London, Theâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels etc.,^[2] as well as a stage design for a new production of Richard Strauss's opera “Der Rosenkavalier” in 2020 staged by André Heller at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Berlin. Since 1992, Hausner has been working exclusively as a painter.^[3] Her works have been shown at numerous galleries, art fairs and museums. She lives and works in Berlin and Vienna.

Her first stage sets were collages built from material collected from condemned houses, junk yards and garbage dumps. She used this raw material to assemble a theatrical space that sprung to life in the clash between naturalistic clarity and abstract interpretation. Her favorite configuration was the oxymoron, a correlation of opposites, a concentrated unification of elements caught in centrifugal chaos.^[4]

As of 1990, she began concentrating on painting. People are at the center of her focus. Her images are enigmatic, the situations she depicts ambiguous. Hausner's large-formatted works are societal descriptions, the situations purposely fragmentary, snapshots from daily life.^[5] In contrast to the classical portrait, the characters in her images play the roles of people other than themselves. They are cast like actors in a play. Her style is expressive and her palette brims over with strong colours, a fact that is apparent in the flesh tones of her protagonists.^[6] In addition to the dominance of female figures, fiction and invention are her central themes. The lie that evokes the truth is her specialty and is painted, preserved and composed in images. Hausner paints invented stories the viewer can identify with his or her own life.^[7] Staging is also the main component of her retrospective exhibition, “True Lies” at the Albertina Museum Vienna. Hausner works on paper and mixed-media as well. She transforms large-formatted photos into paintings, incorporating various materials depending on the specific medium she is working in. In this way, painting and photography merge, are transported to the limits of current artistic awareness.^[8] Using a variety of techniques, she concentrates images and constructs a new reality. Producing special edition art works on hand-made paper has become a new field of experimentation for Hausner. These unique limited editions deal with subjects known from her paintings, but the images are reinvented through technique and the medium and evolve into an independent artistic form. While preparing for her exhibition, "Damage", at the Shanghai Art Museum in 2011, she became intensively interested in Asiatic, especially Chinese motifs and began incorporating them into her personal artistic DNA: clear evidence of the global networking in contemporary art.^[9]

In addition to painting, photography is a major component in her work. Hausner interlaces the history and potential inherent in both these image media in a multi-faceted manner, implicitly bringing into her painting not only the principles of photography but consolidating elements of film as well. Hausner stages photos as a basis for painting. She produces and directs her photographic scenarios in her studio, using one or more characters. The choice of a cut, the sense of the fragmentary, the actual montage and the drastic staging of light according to color ultimately contributes to the intense individual atmospheric character of the image.^[10]

Hausner is active in the "Women without Borders" movement and documents through her camera women, active in the struggle against terrorism. She is strongly interested in architectural projects, for example the mantling of the Ringturm in Vienna in 2011, or in designing church windows (Kilian Church in Heilbronn, St. Johannis Church in Gehrden, St. Johannes and St. Laurentius Cathedral in Merseburg).

• 2000 – Ernst Barlach Prize^[11]

• Arte, Metropolis: Stories of Loneliness and Closeness – Visiting Xenia Hausner in her studio in Vienna, broadcast 26 January 2013 at 4:45 P.M.
• 3sat, Culture Time: Harald Wilde, Grand Dame of portrait painting – Xenia Hausner at the Essl-Museum in Kosterneuburg, 24 October 2012.1
• Arte, Metropolis: The artist Xenia Hausner, first broadcast, 11 October 2003.

• Essl Museum Klosterneuburg
• Albertina
• Batliner Foundation
• Wien Museum
• European Central Bank
• Museum Angerlehner
• Museum Würth, Künzselsau und Würth Collection Oslo
• Droege Group, Düsseldorf
• The George Economou Collection
• First Art Foundation
• Hong Kong Arts Centre
• Today Art Museum, Peking
• Seven Bridges Foundation
• Shanghai Art Museum
• Seven Bridges Foundation, US
• Steven Bennett Collection, San Antonio, US
• Serendipity Arts Trust, New Delhi, India
• Sammlung Klewan
• Paul Allen Collection

• Xenia Hausner: Look Left – Look Right. Brandstätter Verlag, 2014, ISBN 978-3-85033-841-7
• ÜberLeben. Brandstätter Verlag, Wien 2012. ISBN 978-3-85033-715-1
• Flagrant délit. Swiridoff Verlag 2012. ISBN 978-3-89929-242-8
• Damage. Hirmer Verlag 2011. ISBN 978-3-7774-4281-5
• You and I. Prestel Verlag, München 2008. ISBN 978-3-7913-4106-4
• Two. Galerie von Braunbehrens, München 2007. ISBN 3-922268-47-1
• GlücksFall. Prestel Verlag, München 2005. ISBN 3-7913-3621-5
• Damenwahl- Berichte aus dem Labor, mit Beiträgen von André Heller, Elfriede Jelinek und Peter Weiermair, deutsch/englisch, Übersetzung von P. J. Blumenthal und Allison Brown, Wienand Verlag, Köln 2003. ISBN 3-87909-824-7
• Wieland Schmied (Hrsg.): Xenia Hausner. Kampfzone. 2. Auflage, Wienand Verlag, Köln 2003. ISBN 3-87909-803-4
• Heart Matters. New York 2003. ISBN 0-9675826-5-2
• Kampfzone. Wienand Verlag, Köln 2000. ISBN 3-87909-687-2
• Figuration. Bozen 1999. ISBN 3-905597-09-8
• Liebesfragmente. Wienand Verlag, Köln 1997. ISBN 3-87909-394-6
• Xenia Hausner: Rätselraum Fremde Frau. Braus Verlag, Heidelberg 1990, ISBN 3-925835-48-2
• Global Art Affairs Foundation: "Personal Structures – Crossing Borders". European Cultural Centre, Venice 2015, ISBN 978-94-90784-18-8
• Die andere Sicht. Sammlerin und Künstlerin. Edition Sammlung Essl, 2014, ISBN 978-3-902001-81-8
• Elfriede Jelinek: Werk und Rezeption. Diskurse. Kontexte. Impulse. Publikationen des Elfriede Jelinek-Forschungszentrums. Pia Janke (Hg.) 2014, 2 Teilbände
• Sie. Selbst. Nackt. Paula Modersohn-Becker und andere Künstlerinnen im Selbstakt. Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2013, ISBN 978-3-7757-3664-0
• Dieter Wellershoff: Was die Bilder erzählen. Ein Rundgang durch mein imaginäres Museum. Kiepenheuer & Witsch Verlag, 2013, ISBN 978-3-462-04555-0
• A.E.I.O.U. Österreichische Aspekte in der Sammlung Würth. Swirdoff Verlag, 2013, ISBN 978-3-89929-272-5
• Museum Angerlehner. Hirmer Verlag, Munich, ISBN 978-3-7774-2130-8
• Holger Brülls: Zeitgenössische Glasmalerei in Deutschland. Centre International du Vitrail, Chartres 2012, ISBN 978-2-908077-06-3
• Burkhard Leismann und Martina Padberg (Hg.): Intimacy! Baden in der Kunst. Kunstmuseum Ahlen, 2010, ISBN 978-3-86832-020-6
• Hans-Peter Wipplinger: Sehnsucht nach dem Abbild. Das Portrait im Wandel der Zeit. Kunsthalle Krems, 2009, ISBN 978-3-901261-43-5
• Christiane Lange/Florian Matzner (Hg.): Zurück zur Figur. Malerei der Gegenwart, Prestel Verlag Munich, 2006
• Österreich: 1900 – 2000. Konfrontation und Kontinuitäten. Edition Sammlung Essl, 2005 ISBN 3-902001-27-5

• Official website
• Literature by and about Xenia Hausner in the German National Library catalogue