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Friedl Kubelka vom Gröller
Museum der Moderne Salzburg | Mönchsberg
In the 1970s and ’80s Viennese art world, a republic of princely painters, to succeed as a female photographer was no mean feat. That’s probably why Friedl Kubelka vom Gröller and her interrogation of her primary medium remain under the radar, esteemed by connoisseurs and revered by alums of her influential schools for photography and film but hardly mentioned in the annals of international Conceptual art. Yet that’s where she belongs, as this remarkable exhibition, “Friedl Kubelka vom Gröller: The Self in the Mirror of the Other. Photographs and Films, 1968–2018,” makes clear. In photography as Friedl Kubelka and in film under the nom de guerre Friedl vom Gröller (the two names are combined in the exhibition’s title), she has produced an exceptional oeuvre: rigorous, analytical, and full of erotic tension and anarchic humor.
Curator Jürgen Tabor succeeded in persuading the recalcitrant artist of the necessity of a solo show that will have consequences on many levels. The...