You & I, 2006

Acrylic painting on hardboard

Mass: 140 x 241 x 2 cm

Hausner's paintings often depict women whose relationships to each other are never fully revealed to the viewer. Her large-format works deliberately show ambiguous, fragmentary situations. The artist usually chooses a very colourful palette to depict her figures; they radiate pride as well as a painful understanding of the world. The emotional presence and penetrating gaze of her actresses hold the audience spellbound.

Xenia Hausner is the daughter of the Austrian painter Rudolf Hausner and the sister of director Jessica Hausner. Between 1972 and 1976 she studied stage design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. From 1977 to 1992 she was commissioned to design more than 100 sets for theatre and opera, including at the Burgtheater in Vienna, Covent Garden in London and the Theâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels. Since 1992 Xenia Hausner has worked exclusively as a painter and has had numerous exhibitions at home and abroad since 1996. She lives and works in Berlin and Vienna.