Sophie von Hellermann
Get Your Head Around It

Sophie von Hellermann (b. 1975, Munich) has created an extensive new work on canvas for the 62-metre vitrine on the south-west wall of the Kunsthalle’s building. Von Hellermann’s paintings quote fact and fiction, drawing diversely from history and culture to develop expansive, narrative compositions. Using broad-brushes to apply acrylic and raw pigment on unprimed canvas, her images are imbued with a luminosity and a sense of movement and weightlessness that contributes to their fleeting, dream-like or cinematic quality.

Get Your Head Around It combines subjects from natural sciences with references to the history of philosophy and culture taking inspiration from its location and proximity to institutions such as Vienna’s Natural History Museum. It pays tribute to the writer, cybernetician, language theorist and musician Oswald Wiener (b. 1935, Vienna; d. 2021, Steiermark) with whom von Hellermann studied Erkenntnistheorie [epistemology] while at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in the 1990s.

Motifs include the Baum der Erkenntnis [Tree of Knowledge], the cave paintings at Lascaux and Plato’s speleological allegory. A pair of black and white swans make a passing reference to the Viennese philosopher Karl Popper and his theory of Kritischer Rationalismus [Critical Rationalism]. The end of the frieze references Wiener's concept for a ‘Bio-Adapter’ first described in his novel die verbesserung von mitteleuropa [The Improvement of Central Europe]. This cybernetic apparatus would facilitate the transfer of consciousness to electronic circuits while allowing the body to decompose, offering ‘a complete solution of all world problems’.

The commission is von Hellermann’s first solo exhibition in Austria. The artist also supports the Kunsthalle Wien’s edition series with 13 unique watercolours.