About
ContactIn her artistic work, Iris Kohlweiss investigates the multidimensional dynamics of human perception and its role in constructing reality. She makes clear that the body functions not merely as a physical organ of perception, but as a transcendent medium mediating between inner states and outer influences.
In this she follows an understanding echoed across art-historical and philosophical currents — phenomenology, for instance, or theories of embodied cognition: the body is not simply a "vessel" for consciousness, but itself a site where perception and world interact. In Kohlweiss's work, this idea becomes sensuously palpable. The interplay of movement and attentiveness — nourished by years of practice in dance and movement technique — merges with her artistic practice. Her refined bodily awareness flows into every gesture, and her embodied knowledge of rhythm and energy lends the images an unmistakable vitality and calm. Every line and trace of colour seems to carry an inner rhythm reminiscent of flowing movement — a quiet dynamism emerges.
> "The body is our first and most natural instrument for perceiving the world."
> — Maurice Merleau-Ponty
This particular atmosphere is also reflected in the layered compositions of her work. Many viewers describe an impression that feels at once archaic and futuristic when encountering her pieces — an effect arising from the interplay between a deeply rooted closeness to nature and forward-looking, at times experimental, visual languages. Geometric forms and translucent planes of colour overlap to create complex visual tensions that mirror the processual nature of perception and experience. Kohlweiss weaves organic structures into conceptual compositions, producing a profound aesthetic and structural coherence.
A vivid example is her series Realm Translation, in which she translates spatial experience into drawing. Layers of delicate coloured pencil — part geometric, part organic — are mirrored across a central axis. This fine interplay of colour and form opens ever-new perspectives, inviting the discovery of manifold interrelations. While Realm Translation is concerned chiefly with spatial experience, in a more recent series Kohlweiss turns her attention to emotional space — in particular to feelings named in other cultures but with no direct equivalent in German.
This inquiry draws on constructivist approaches within emotion research, which hold that people shape their emotions largely on the basis of learned concepts. When a language lacks a term, the corresponding feeling can remain largely absent from collective awareness. Kohlweiss takes up these "unnamed" emotions to open new perspectives on feeling. She works on unprimed, raw canvas — at times with coloured pencil, oil pastel and diluted acrylic — combining clear forms, often reminiscent of architectural plans or dress patterns, with planar elements that can carry both geometric and organic qualities. In places, this precision gives way to uncontrolled washes of diluted colour, unfolding a subtle, poetic tension.
Her works invite one to engage with the intangible — with what lies between forms, between the lines, and in the silence in between. In a synthesis of materiality, ritual and perception, images and experiences emerge that open space for association, memory and possibilities not yet thought.
Education
2007 Diploma with distinction, University of Applied Arts, Vienna
2000-2007 Studied Painting and Animation Film, University of Applied Arts, Vienna
2000 Diploma, University of Art and Design, Derby, UK
Born in Wolfsberg, Austria
Collections
bm:ukk Artothek des Bundes Vienna
Lower Austria State Collection
Museum Moderne Kunst Kärnten
Red Bull Hangar-7
Museum Angerlehner
ÖBV Vienna
Kärntner Sparkasse