The contrast to the present, on which the value of age is based, reveals itself rather in an imperfection, a lack of closure, a tendency toward the dissolution of form and color, characteristics that are directly opposed to those of modern, i.e., newly created structures1.

The ethics of the young academic discipline of conservation and restoration, shaped in the German-speaking world, is continuously based on the theories of Alois Riegl (1858–1905). With his art-theoretical work on the cult of monuments, Riegl developed different value categories (age, historical, artistic, novelty, and use values) for the treatment of monuments and advocated for a conscious engagement with the individual categories and specific works.

Christine Gironcoli’s artistic practice is deeply rooted in her thirty years of work as a painting restorer. Her studio, where she has been creating her own works since the mid-1990s, reflects this past in its furnishings and atmosphere. The heavy, dark blue cast-iron press, along with various old and new materials—objects collected and preserved over the years—now find their way into her paintings. Previously used support canvases, once employed to reinforce aged, brittle fabric structures before being replaced, serve as a starting point for Gironcoli. Re-stretched, she responds to the existing marks and traces with oil paint and various techniques. Starch paste and the aforementioned press play an important role in this process. Signs of aging are acknowledged for their intrinsic value and intuitively combined with new elements, whose form, color, and aesthetics harmonize with the preexisting structures. The juxtaposition and layering of different surfaces—coarse grids of thick linen threads or finer grids of paper substrates—define the character of her works. Additionally, both abstract and more figurative elements contribute to their distinctive composition.

A horn spoon, aged by time in the studio, was sewn onto the canvas and titled Ar— Mut (2016). The naked dolls, from the artist’s and her brother’s possession, handmade and gifted by their grandmother at Christmas in 1945, hang centrally in the work Enfance (2015). Both figurative elements enhance the implied political content of these images. Fragments of an oval wooden stretcher frame, doubled as an ornament in the lower corners of the untitled work from 2021, feature a central drawing of an abstract symbol, which seems like the message of a coded language. The Sumerian symbol for fate is combined by Gironcoli with the severed part of an old painted canvas (Untitled, 2023–2024). The Latin inscription, once a dedication to a holy portrait, is now abstracted due to its fragmented state and altered context, creating a new narrative. Stories that are spinned by Gironcoli, in a mixture of intention and coincidence (Absicht und Zufall).

Christine Gironcoli (b. 1941 in Austria) graduated in 1961 from the painting class of Prof. Eduard Bäumer at the University of Applied Arts and subsequently trained as a painting restorer. After completing this work in 1995, she dedicated herself to creating her own artworks. Christine Gironcoli’s work was first presented to a wider audience in 2019 at the Galerie Kai Middendorff in Frankfurt am Main. After her 2022 exhibition at Kunstfabrik Groß-Siegharts in Waldviertel, Absicht und Zufall is another tribute to the artist’s work in Austria, at the Galerie Elisabeth & Klaus Thoman in Vienna. In 2026, her first institutional solo exhibition will take place at the Kunsthalle Lingen in Germany.

Notes

1 Alois Riegl, The modern cult of monuments: its nature and its origin, Vienna/Leipzig 1903, p. 22.