Actress Isolde Maria Goham turns 90

With the character “Isold Maria Joham. Rediscovering the vision”, the Landesgalerie Niederösterreich in Krems dedicates the most comprehensive exhibition to date of the artist and the 2021 prize winner from the state of Lower Austria, which can be seen until 9 October.

“Like many artists of her generation, Isolde Maria Joham has been overshadowed by Austrian art history. The exhibition at the Landesgalerie aims to redefine the profile of her work,” say Gerda Riedler and Alexandra Chantel, curators. This is clearly achieved with this impressive retrospective, which does justice to many aspects of this rich work.

From glass art to large format photos

Joham’s beginnings lie in the art of glass, as evidenced by ordered works – for example in the Vienna Museum of Applied Arts and in some churches. Joham – born May 28, 1932 in Mürzzuschlag in Styria and has lived in Hainfeld since 1973 with her husband the sculptor Gottfried Höllwarth – chaired the glass design class at the Polytechnic University from 1972 to 1993.

Pop Art, Pikachu and Critical Perspectives

From the early eighties he turned to painting. Her large format photographs deal with the complex subject of technology between man and nature. Critical perspectives often play a role here, for example in the depiction of three laboratory monkeys in a nuclear reactor. “My goal is always the same,” Goham was quoted as saying: “To give people the impetus to take a critical look at our environment. I don’t want to be accused, I want attention.”

The viewer must look rather than look away, not only at art, but also in reality, which Goham sees in the form of partial explosions. In her later paintings, the artist deals with the dream of an artificial man. Robot Marvin from the movie novel A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and cheerful pocket monster Pikachu from the Pokémon video game are often recurring elements.

An exceptional artist in the art scene

“Isolde Joham is one of the exceptional artists in the Austrian art scene, as an painter who has followed an international trend, particularly American and East Asian,” Brigitte Borchardt Bierbaumer wrote last year on the occasion of showcasing Lower Austrian Culture. Prize in the field of fine arts by Isolde Maria Joham. Characterized by her large-scale depictions of modern life, “special icons are mass-produced Asian goods such as dragons and everyday comic characters from tourist kitsch, which are spread across new media,” says Borchardt Bierbaumer.