Berlin | ArtRegion: Berlin, Kreuzberg

König Galerie

Xenia Hausner: Unintended Beauty

29. April – 12. Juni 2022

Xenia Hausner explores the question of beauty. Her latest show comprises twelve new paintings by the Berlin- and Vienna-based artist and is entitled UNINTENDED BEAUTY. Hausner looks at how beauty and the coincidental combine in contemporary art. But underpinning her current exhibition is also the question of how beauty and dread relate to each other. The distinction between them is fluid. “Every angel is terrifying,” says the often-cited line from Rilke’s Duino Elegies (1912-1922). “For beauty is nothing but the start of terror, that we are still able to bear, and we revere it so, because it calmly disdains to destroy us.” Hausner adapts Rilke’s words for her own purposes, suggesting that “in art, terror is nothing but the start of beauty”. From the apocalyptic murmurings there suddenly rises a glimmer of hope; prophecies of destruction are countered with the inventiveness and power of art.