www.alexandrakontriner.com, @alexandrakontriner
Work: 1. The Forest / Clouds, 2. The Forest / Clouds, 3. The Forest / Fireweed. 1 + 2: 2023, watercolor on paper. 3: 2024, watercolor and pencil on paper
Prize of the City of Krems, endowed with EUR 4,000 and a solo exhibition at galeriekrems
Prize Donor: City of Krems, represented by Mayor Peter Molnar
Laudatory Speech: Elisabeth Kreuzhuber (City Councilor and Chair of the Cultural Committee of the City of Krems), on behalf of Jasper Sharp (Curator and Director of Phileas, Vienna)
About the Work
Alexandra Kontriner was born in Tyrol and lives and works in Vienna. Her three-part work The Forest reflects on climate change and the impacts of globalization. With precise observation, she creates delicate watercolors and drawings that invite viewers to do the same: to look closely - at the art and the world around us.
Jury Statement
The Tyrolean-born artist Alexandra Kontriner lives and works in Vienna. The trio of watercolors she submitted for the Erich Grabner Prize, for which she received the Prize of the City of Krems, reflects the landscapes and natural environment of her upbringing. The first work is based on a photograph of a cloud-covered sky, taken after a devastating storm swept through the Southern Alps in autumn 2018. The second brings us to the forest floor, immersing us in the battered and twisted remains of a spruce forest. It conveys a strange, unsettling calm, evoking a sense of overwhelming, elemental force.
The third and final piece, in watercolor and pencil, is the calmest of all. It depicts the open seed capsule of fireweed (Epilobium angustifolium), a plant that thrives in damaged forest areas and contributes to their gradual yet inevitable regeneration. Displayed at life-size in a vitrine, it almost appears as if the capsule has been carefully placed there before the viewer.
Together, the three works form a cautionary narrative about climate change and the effects of globalization. They also reflect a creative cycle the artist herself undergoes during the making of her work: thinking, researching, observing, discovering, organizing, and depicting.
Kontriner’s drawings and watercolors are the result of intense observation, inviting us to do the same: to look carefully first at the artwork and then at the world around us. Meticulously executed, they are modest in scale yet expansive in impact. They accomplish what truly great art does: they slow us down, pose questions, leave much unsaid, and yet linger in our memory.
[For the Jury: Jasper Sharp]