Visual Propaganda #7: Sarah Bildstein
Dedicated to the work of the Austrian abstract painter Sarah Bildstein
The abstract paintings of Austrian artist Sarah Bildstein wield a befuddling and at times even unnerving opacity. To approach them is to lose context for the art experience itself. Just as a shape seems to order itself it dissipates into formlessness. The soft color palette — pinks, light greens, various earth tones — evokes putridity and sickliness every bit as much as it does serenity and quietude; the aesthetic almost evokes the not entirely unpleasant fatigue that one experiences just after the stomach viral symptoms of the flu have passed (or, the peaceful sickliness of the “no side effects” Covid vaccination, if you will). That state of surreal peace when you’re floored with exhaustion, watching a film but only retaining fragments of the image on a screen as you drift in and out of the delirium.
These recent paintings from Bildstein’s “Serie Unknown” series have a palpable Rorshach effect. It is harder to discern the artist’s intentionality than it is the subjective aesthetic experience (your own bullshit) that you bring to the art itself. This makes for very singular viewing – the images harken back to the early nobility of mid-20th Century painting while pertaining quite directly to the contemporary condition of our Late Modernity. In the ambiguity of these paintings, the artist creates a space for ideological restructuring, and with that we’d like to welcome our newest recruit to the Counter-Agency of the Avant-Garde: Sarah Bildstein.
Follow Sarah on Instagram: @sarahbildstein
Titles:
1. Sarah Bilstein taboh eile
2. Sarah Bilstein Ooma Loompa
3. Sarah Bilstein Jumper Unknown
4. Sarah Bilstein Countingsort
5. Sarah Bilstein Kusa
6. Sarah Bilstein Kodaimai
7. Sarah Bildstein Hu
8. Sarah Bildstein No presure