Since the early 1970s Bertlmann has focused on issues surrounding themes of sexuality, love, gender and eroticism within a social context, with her own body often serving as the artistic medium. Her diverse practice spans across painting, drawing, collage, photography, sculpture and performance, and actively confronts the social stereotypes assigned to masculine and feminine behaviours and relationships. Bertlmann represented Austria at the Biennale Arte 2019. Her exhibition „Hier ruht meine Zärtlichkeit“ inaugurated the new State Gallery of Lower Austria in Krems.

Renate Bertlmann / © Irina Gavritsch, 2018

THIS TOO SHALL PASS, Renate Bertlmann, 2015

Renate Bertlmann on her work: "AMO ERGO SUM"

In 1978 a Plexiglas object titled AMO ERGO SUM was created. It contains 77 Plexiglas letters filled with messages from myself and others. In the course of my artistic work, a life plan which I strive to realize with the greatest perseverance, sprang out of this title. In 1988 it became necessary to recapitulate, or rather, document the last 20 years in the form of a publication. The result of this retrospective is the trilogy "AMO ERGO SUM" with its three parts: PORNOGRAPHY (Part 1), IRONY (Part 2) and UTOPIA (Part 3). This division was a compromise in regards to the complexity of the undertaking. Today, I still fluctuate between these three areas with the intention of weaving a dense, system analytical web of relations.

Logically, this leads to a complex, mutual fusion of all three parts. This means that PORNOGRAPHY is ironic and utopian, IRONY is pornographic and utopian, and UTOPIA is pornographic and ironic. In this sense the trilogy became the entrance into, and a starting point for, a hypermedia project, which is fascinating to me on a daily basis because it consistently produces new links, ties and additional information itself, as well as being able to absorb from the outside.

Zärtlicher Christus, Renate Bertlmann, 2019 / © Kunstmeile Krems, Claudia Rohrauer

bertlmann.com ➢