Vondal, Karl
Austria, 1953
Karl Vondal was born in the Lower Austrian town of Obersiebenbrunn. At 19, he was admitted to the “Lower Austrian State Mental Health and Care Facility at Gugging.” His subsequent chronic illness made it necessary for him to permanently reside in psychiatric institutions. Vondal spent most of this time in Gugging, where his artistic talent was recognized in the eighties. Between the 1980s and 2002, when he moved into the House of Artists, Vondal established the basis for his artistic career, as was emphasized through his inclusion in the galerie gugging in 2003. Vondal’s oeuvre is dominated by largeformat, collage-like works on paper created using pencil, ink, colored pencils, and acrylics in pastel colors. Vondal cuts motifs out of his own existing drawings and glues them on to paper supports in various formats, which are sometimes themselves assembled out of multiple pieces. Alongside collage, we find another stylistic element in his work: the assemblage. Pebbles, toothpicks, and matchsticks form a relief-like surface. Women and eroticism are the dominant themes in the artist’s oeuvre. Under the influence of the 1968 erotic film The Nieces of the Colonel’s Wife – the artist’s formative visual experience – women are attributed an intensely erotic presence in Vondal’s work. Since 2002 the artist has worked ceaselessly in both the House of Artists and the open atelier gugging.
