Margo, 2015, oil on canvas, 61 × 50.5 cm
Emma, 2016, canvas, 49 × 41 cm
Katja, 2016, canvas, 48.2 × 42.5 cm
Occupied space and the body in its cultural context are central to Markus Schinwald's works as foundational elements for transformation and manipulation. He has worked in a variety of media: painting, sculpture, film, performance, and large, site-specific installations. His work "is centered on the body as a cultural construct, as an incessantly actualized site at which the subject is constituted both in its identity and its instability and transversality. He is not true to one medium, but rather nomadic as he appropriates methods and/or devices from cultural theory, film, and poetry, among others. Dysfunctionality and disorder are key notions in his work." Schinwald's early training in fashion and costume history often becomes apparent in his work. One of his earliest pieces, Jubelhemd (1997), hovers between straight jacket and formal wear. The arms have been sewn in upside-down, provoking an ambivalent gesture reminiscent of both surrender and celebration, with hands to the sky.
In his work, Markus Schinwald creates a precarious, at times unsettling, atmosphere. He equips the subjects of his 19th century portraits with peculiar veils, supports, wires and bandages, which the artist perceives as "prostheses for unspecified cases." Schinwald first began his over-painted portraits in the late 1990s, and has been a reference point for later work by artists like Hans-Peter Feldman, who imposes clown-noses onto oil portraits in a similar manner. Together with a team of conservators, Schinwald developed a technique in 2011 for integrating historical paintings into large canvases, extending the original work which, in effect, alters not only the scale of the artwork, but blurs the lines of the inserted image's historical and contextual fixity.
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