Stylianos
Schicho
Artist · Vienna
He maps global social events in large-format works — coal lines, semi-transparent figures that turn their backs, circular borders staking out territory. The viewer is drawn in by the scale, then confronted. Closeness is forced. Distance is the subject.
If you are an artist, everything is a possible influence. The world is full of strange and fascinating things — these create disappearing images, and art is trying to keep some of those images for the future.
I keep emphasising that so-called namedropping is nothing. But role models are important in the way of creating an example — how to attain certain things within your art — delivering a constant demand towards yourself and your work. Because the biggest critic is the artist herself or himself.
What are those images — which patterns appear? What are the ongoing issues in global society? What is this collective consciousness in the time of social distance?
Important for me is questioning the inner self, while trying to analyse the outcome.
It is difficult to talk about your own work. It is like being a bird and an ornithologist at the same time.
My focus has always been to observe socially relevant flows, currents, tensions, and other issues — in order to transform them into art. In short, to map and depict global social events. My image formats usually inevitably confront. I want the viewer to feel, due to the scale, that they want closeness — it almost forces it.
For the figures in my pictures, this also means that their disguises no longer offer protection. In recent works, the figures with their semi-transparent bodies turn their backs on the viewer. You can recognise a certain refusal, a turning away — perhaps the ultimate retreat. A persistent, circular border around the protagonists separates them with thick lines of coal. Their territory is staked out. You have been delivered. Only the white space around the canvas still offers some freedom.
The Owl, the Glass Door,
and the Angel of History
In 2017, I created a piece that can be seen as an analogy to Angelus Novus by Paul Klee from 1920. Its interpretation by Walter Benjamin provided an approach in terms of content in which my years of work accumulated.
Out of an impulse, I drew an owl in the dust of an old glass door — as a reference to Klee's angel of history. It stops with its open wings against the wind of progress, wants to bring rescue, but can no longer close its protective wings. The owl is driven backwards into the future.
An additional aspect is the angle of light reflected on the dusty glass and its shadow play, creating a double image. Something always remains hidden from us — swallowed up by the outline that we ourselves cast on the glass surface.
It is no longer a question of our being observed. No longer primarily about the surveillance apparatus and today's communication society. My main concern is to be aware of one's own perspective, to recognise one's own blind spots. It is, in a significant way, about the point of view we take — and whether we can let ourselves be moved from here, and live with the downside that emerges.
"As an artist, I am used to loneliness and isolation in the studio. If a comparison can be drawn at all, it is like the work of a lighthouse keeper — not exactly sociable. But the real adventures with artists take place in the head."
At the moment, the past — in the form of my old works — seems to be catching up with me, due to the precarious current situation. The images begin to resemble reality, although I am not talking about a Cassandra effect. The result is a very strange and uneasy feeling.
It is like I'm starting to wait — for my own past to become past. But it won't stop being future. Like a daily routine of going in circles.
Modern human life is a constant struggle between closeness and distance, communication and interaction, intimacy and isolation. These have always been the focus of my work, and have now become even clearer and omnipresent.
A scenario we all know from daily life: the encounter of sober, evasive looks — while important facial expressions remain hidden by the face mask. It is that seemingly distant attitude that my characters also express.
These poles have always been the focus of Schicho's work. Large-format confrontation — the viewer wants to step back but the scale prevents it. Semi-transparent bodies that refuse the gaze. Coal lines that circle and separate. The white space that barely breathes.
And then, in the years following the pandemic, those same images began to feel less like art and more like documentation. The unsettling gap between prediction and fact.
Exhibitions and presentations that Schicho had been working towards were postponed. Visiting friends, art enthusiasts, and collectors became difficult or impossible. And yet —
There will be a solo exhibition at Galerie Hilger NEXT in Vienna. The work continues. The owl still can't close its wings.
Hilger NEXT Vienna · Austria
CENTER OF ATTRACTION (studio view)
charcoal / acrylic on canvas, 2019
170 x 200cm
