ELISABETH PLANK’S CAPTIVATING EXPLOSION OF COLOR IN LINZ
KUNSTMAGAZIN PARNASS
Margareta Sandhofer
At the Linz Castle Museum, Elisabeth Plank presents a comprehensive insight into 40 years of her diverse painterly work in her first solo museum exhibition, giving it a brilliant showcase in unusually large formats.
The exhibition begins with “Large Painting with Purple” from 1983, when Plank was still studying under Oswald Oberhuber at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, and extends to her most recent series “Lyrics” from 2024. Her studies with Ossi Oberhuber and the uninterrupted friendship she shared with him, along with the collegial intellectual exchange and a shared unwavering passion for art, were likely very formative for her artistic development. Her long-standing body of work traverses unexpected, multifaceted metamorphoses. It balances playful lightness across various stylistic means while simultaneously demonstrating the highest degree of independence and resistance to any fashionable trend. In this regard, it resembles her former teacher’s work, without being formally beholden to him or any other influences. Instead, Elisabeth Plank’s painting develops its own inherent logic. It arises from a deep engagement with painting itself, a joy in color and composition, and courage in experimentation.
Plank works in dialogue with painterly tools and materials, testing and exploring compositional and coloristic possibilities, treating the pictorial space as an inexhaustible terrain. In “O.T. (Street Dance)” from 2009, she effortlessly handles the enormous format of 280 × 480 cm, which confronts visitors with its powerful vitality.
Her scholarships in New York (1991) and Japan (1992) further stimulated her painterly development. The American environment encouraged expansive expressive gestures and large formats, while the Japanese approach inspired ascetic ink drawings on paper in abstract modes. These radically reduced works from 1992 are displayed in the second exhibition room, alongside two examples of her abstract “Time Containers” series painted in Vienna in 1993. Through meticulous arrangements of countless sepia dots on Molino paper, Plank intensifies and de-formalizes the Japanese ink works, developing her formal and color vocabulary anew. From these minimal marks, she constructs entire compositions using reduced color-coded strokes, eventually returning to a vibrant love of color.
A few selected works reflect Plank’s engagement with figuration. In these, the lily motif is barely recognizable, reduced and fragmented via stencils and airbrush onto silhouettes. These pieces appear as playful color manifestations, intentionally sensuous, exuberantly carefree, and vividly colorful.
The latest works in the exhibition are the elongated large horizontal formats of “Lyrics”. Set against rich colored grounds, linear, luminous elements animate the inner harmony, punctuated with vibrational accents. The dynamic interplay of shapes and colors fills the space with captivating energy. Particularly the most recent work, dominated by caput mortuum (dark violet) and red tones, oscillates between spirituality and sensuality, drawing the viewer into its multifaceted allure and leaving a lingering impression.
Link: https://www.parnass.at/ausstellungen/elisabeth-planks-fesselnde-farbenexplosion-in-linz (german)