Artists

Ashley Hans Scheirl

Press release

Ashley Hans Scheirl’s extensive retrospective at Belvedere 21 spans the 1970s to the present and features new works created specifically for this exhibition. Since the late 1970s, Ashley Hans Scheirl has developed a remarkably diverse body of work. Their movies, many of which were filmed using the Super8 format, have established the artist as an internationally recognized pioneer in queer-feminist and transgender counterculture. Scheirl’s twenty years of practice in film, performance, and sound production have culminated in two experimental feature films, Rote Ohren fetzen durch Asche / Flaming Ears (1992) and Dandy Dust (1998). In the 1990s, the focus shifted to painting as a medium for exploring questions of identity through an engagement with art history and the incorporation of various genres. Abstract Expressionism meets Photorealism, dark Romanticism meets Pop Art, and Bad Painting meets Surrealism. Important references include the splatter film genre, Viennese Actionism, Donna Haraway, and the literary pornography of Georges Bataille. Scheirl views their work as a satirical take on the increasingly surreal nature of the neoliberal economic system, using cutting humor to address the social constructs of gender, sexuality, and power.