Formen des Auswurfs

Ursula Hübner’s (b. 1957) series of portraits R. O. confronts us with grotesque head and face forms of awkwardly rampant bog plant blossoms, mushrooms, and creepers set off against airy, mostly light blue backgrounds. The features do not add up to a whole; only details can be made out. While many areas are left blank or translucent, life seems to concentrate in other places. Musty decay and manured growth merge with one another like in a compost biotope. The portraits, individualized by means of different first names in their titles, may be read as surreal mood paintings that convey how an ostensibly stable personality starts floundering, dissolves, and loses its form. Emotions concerning the low and the repulsive as described by Bataille in his criticism of the human figure and anthropomorphism are skillfully employed here with the objective of integrating the rest suppressed as a part of subjectivization processes.

Text: Cosima Rainer
Translation: Wolfgang Astelbauer