Michael Ornauer

Born in Vienna, 1979, Michael Ornauer is an Austrian contemporary artist. He deals intensively with the possibilities of colour play and that of its substance and materiality. With the interplay between the conscious and the unconscious, he creates colourful and monochrome works and deliberately moves away from the obvious beauty and concentrates on the spirituality of Wabi-Sabi, the contemplation of imperfection and impermanence. In his Stripe series, it’s about rhythm and colour and structure, and random spread. With missing spots of colour and thick layers of paint that go beyond the edge of the picture, he works against the urge of the flawlessness. In his Monochrome series, Ornauer focues on the matured, veiled and broken, by overpainting colourful finished paintings with blackboard paint and then bringing out underneath layers of paint through final sanding.

Biography