KÖNIG GALERIE presents VERTIGO, Austyn Weiner’s first solo show in Germany.

For Austyn Weiner, the act of painting twists beyond process and into practice. Beyond moving material around a canvas to achieve an agreeable composition, Weiner’s approach is a regimented, introspective, and sacred practice that builds upon itself day by day. When she steps into the studio, Weiner temporarily leaves the earthly plane, seeing beyond the given reality to carry the currents of the whole from subconscious into reality. It is as if her future self is guiding the action, moving the pieces, and thrumming the rhythm of her painting with equal parts self-assurance and restraint. There is a knowledge in the work.

In VERTIGO, the artist seizes the weight of the moment and to transform the practice she has spent years cultivating. A nod to the word that gave the exhibition its title, VERTIGO was conceived under disorienting circumstances – some chosen by, others inflicted upon, Weiner.

In the process that led to VERTIGO, Weiner’s typical studio experience became an altered arena for creation— a warehouse-like space where the artist labored alone, all overhead lighting removed save for the glow of faint red light to help gauge direction. In blinding herself to the given reality of paint colors, Weiner was freed from tradition, released from the unconscious expression of rules she’d been pressed to follow. Through release, she abandoned fear and welcomed the vast openness of possibility. In an ironic twist of fate, Weiner’s self-produced disorientation was met with an unwelcomed bout of vertigo— yet rather than letting the symptoms pause the painting process, she leaned into the physical manifestations of the universe-challenging effect and saw her work through a new physicality outside of the boundaries of time and expectation.

Weiner’s incessant forward momentum is not only apparent conceptually, but also formally. In VERTIGO, Weiner has moved away from nearly all traces of the figure that once inhabited her work, entering into an advanced realm of abstraction. Though indiscernible in their final form, the jumping off point for each work originated from a landscape study. Unsatisfied with replicating this archetypal mode, Weiner played with flipping the canvas and painting from different heights until the landscape’s trace vanished. The blank space of the canvas is strategically embraced, offering space to the rich earthy hues that dominate the surface. The paintings are looser, the gestures grander and seeping with confidence. Every mark is taken into consideration; there is never a single stroke that does not belong and, simultaneously, not a stroke more than what is needed. In Weiner’s concerted effort to let go of control, she has discovered a freedom which breathes new life into her exploration of abstraction.

Capturing instability to transcend the limitations of past and present, with VERTIGO, Weiner finds the future in equilibrium.