The Belvedere 21 museum in Vienna is currently hosting a groundbreaking solo exhibition by Ashley Hans Scheirl titled "In & Out of Painting," running until February 1, 2026. The show presents painting as the foundation for a body of work that expands into theatrical, cinematic, and craft-like dimensions, challenging traditional concepts of what painting can be.
When art experts discuss painting, particularly the wild, abstract variety, they sometimes use the term "paw" to describe how a painter (almost always male) makes their mark with powerful, decisive brushstrokes. These associations with bears and lions are intentional, as such artistic geniuses also have territory to defend. In Scheirl's exhibition, however, the "paw" is somewhat hidden - perhaps it's the small skeletal hand concealed within a specially constructed table apparatus that can be set in motion at the push of a button.
This mechanical hand might reference Edvard Munch's famous self-portrait with a skeletal hand, or it could be a critical analytical exposure of the painter's gesture. While the exact meaning remains ambiguous, anyone willing to look beyond the seemingly quirky and over-the-top nature of this exhibition quickly recognizes that someone is at work who understands the essence of painting both practically and theoretically, having reached a level of artistry that allows for liberated play.
Ashley Hans Scheirl has been demonstrating for several decades how everything in life is malleable - including the artist's own gender identity. Born as Angela in Salzburg in 1956, Scheirl enrolled as Hans Scheirl at London's St. Martins College in 2001, created successful underground films, and later adopted the deliberately girly name Ashley. This constant transformation reflects the core philosophy evident throughout the artist's work.
As the exhibition's title thesis "In & Out of Painting" demonstrates, painting remained the anchor point for Scheirl's inventions. The directness with which the transformation of forms, ideas, and meanings can be accomplished on canvas cannot be easily washed away even by digital revolutions. Maria Lassnig, to whom Scheirl was connected for many years as a model, assistant, and friend, paved a path by transforming physical conditions into forms and colors, where the proximity of an image to visible reality was subject only to artistic discretion.
Scheirl follows this path but goes considerably more boldly in pulverizing painterly genius clichés. In the work "Hans im Bild" (Hans in the Picture) from 2008, the self-portrait of a painter-prince becomes autonomous as a stage image - the canvas goes around a corner and is extended by a tongue-like protrusion. Abstract markings can be found in many of Scheirl's paintings, but the "paw" usually gets company, such as a masterfully detailed painted golden pile of excrement ("The Alchemist's Fetish," 2021) or a wide-legged standing Scheirl urinating while standing ("Neoliberal Surrealist," 2019).
Scheirl is not the first to understand painting as a trace of the body and relate it to other bodily processes that turn the inside outward. However, while artists like American Paul McCarthy or the Viennese Actionists provoked scandals with such approaches, the short-circuit of art with feces, sperm, blood, or urine in Scheirl's work usually has something cheerfully ironic about it. Those who want to delve into the psychological rabbit hole might think of children's joy in having made something of their own.
In the worst case, the fecal motifs could serve as a pretext to giggle away the seriousness of this art. Yet it's less about the substances than about transformation. Scheirl, as a trained restaurateur versed in art history and various painting techniques, also conjures references from alchemy and mythology from the brush - the star money girl, the golden donkey, or Danae from Ovid's Metamorphoses, who lets herself be wetted by a golden rain from the god-father Zeus, peek around the corner.
The question repeatedly arises of what is being weighed with gold, and thus what the value of art is measured by in a figurative sense. Scheirl owes a clear answer - the noble and the ignoble can exchange places just as much as identification with a gender and the associated bodies, clothing, and codes. "I like it best when you play with it," Scheirl says when asked about this. "It's a mischievous pleasure."
Ashley Hans Scheirl, born in 1956, lived for a long time in New York and London and taught at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna from 2006 to 2022. Together with Jakob Lena Knebl, Scheirl represented Austria at the 2022 Venice Biennale. The retrospective "In & Out of Painting" can be seen at Belvedere 21 until February 1, 2026. At the Lower Belvedere, the exhibition "Radical - Female Artists and Modernism" runs until October 12.
