ALBA Gallery

Christiane Peschek‘s works live between emotional alienation, self-sacralisation and fluid identity research in an extended virtual space. In images and multi-sensory installations she creates dialogues sculpted by virtual exhaustion, intimacy and self-idealisation. The observation of the physical body on both sides of the screen, between on- and offline identities are a continuous topic in her projects. Words, retouched images, scents and other sensual and ethereal materials become hybrids of analog processes and digital/virtual transformation in a post-Internet reality. In interaction with near-body technologies such as smartphones, Peschek explores the “hyper-ego” using the surface of touchscreens to create experiences in the intersection of technology and cosmology.

*1984 Christiane Peschek‘s work has been internationally exhibited in Galleries and Institutions such as FOTOGALERIE Vienna, the NRW Forum Düsseldorf, Museum MARTA, U10 Belgrade, UNSEEN Amsterdam, Salzburger Kunstverein and Benaki Museum Athens. Peschek was awarded with several international prices such as the UNSEEN Tesla Art Trail award, honor price of Emergentes DST and the state scholarship for photography by the Austrian Government. Her works are found in collections such as ING DiBa Art Collection, the Museum of Modern Art Salzburg, the Artothek at Belvedere21 Vienna and the Kupferstichkabinett Vienna.

Founded in 2022 ALBA Gallery is representing its thematically intrinsic program by bringing exceptional exhibitions to life, interconnected by their transdisciplinary approach. Driven by a keen interest in the wide-ranged conditions of human identity, ALBA‘s program explores this spectrum ¬in all its beauty and cruelty. Being attracted by the aesthetics of both the immensely atrocious as well as the overwhelmingly beautiful, we all as human beings deal with universal issues, everyone can find a part of themselves in. What makes us human? What is real/life? Where do we position ourselves within these concepts, what motivates our urge to then escaping from them and where do we anticipate to find ourselves once this process is successful? The undeniable disparity between what we – as a society – commonly agree upon as real life and our individually received reality – aligned to the purpose of prevarication – remains uncanny and self-destructive behavioural patterns reflect on the paradigms of contemporary times and emotional mechanisms, as seductive illusions consume us with heart and soul. ALBA embraces those identity fomenting directions emerging from plurality, proprioceptively renegotiating the fragility of both the physical and the virtual self and its realities.