Galerie nächst St. Stephan Rosemarie Schwarzwälder

Born and based in Vienna, Austria, the practice of Konstanze Stoiber moves between painting, garments, video and photography. Stoiber draws upon references of fallen systems, dissecting the remnants of the Monarchy and Christianity in Austria. An analysis of extremes – sublimity and violence in power structures and their self-contradicting nature. Her focus lies on shifts in identity-forming and societal rituals in light of secularisation. Stoiber therefore questions the influence of religious artefacts, symbols and sites on current-day European society.

KONSTANZE STOIBER (*1999) born and based in Vienna. Stoiber completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Fashion Design and Painting at the Parsons School of Design, New York City and Paris. Moving to Oxford at age 15, and pursuing her studies in Paris and New York City granted Konstanze Stoiber the possibility of examining her personal as well as collective history at a distance. She is currently participating in the Artistic Research PhD Program at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna. Her most recent exhibitions include: There Have to be Bells, Galerie nächst St. Stephan, Vienna (solo) (2024); September. Reminiscence of a Journey to the Holy Land, Department for Biblical Studies, Faculty of Catholic Theology, University of Vienna, Vienna (solo) (2023); She Only Likes Violence, Galerie D., Romainville, France (solo) (2022); and the Parsons Paris Graduate Show: YMCA, Paris (group) (2021).

Galerie nächst St. Stephan was the first gallery in Austria to focus on avant-garde art in the postwar era. It opened its doors in 1954 in the former rooms of the legendary Neue Galerie founded by Otto Kallir in 1923. Galerie nächst St. Stephan was initiated and directed by the art connoisseur and priest Monsignor Otto Mauer, who collected works from the entire range of innovative art from Austria, Germany, France, and the US, including the beginnings of Viennese Actionism, feminist art, and early Conceptual Art. The gallery, whose name was changed to Galerie nächst St. Stephan in 1964, soon became an important site of interdisciplinary discourse that would come to be strongly defined by the director Oswald Oberhuber’s thematic approach from the 1960s onward. In 1978, Rosemarie Schwarzwälder became the acting director of the gallery, and she bought the gallery and added her name in 1989.