Barbara Tunkowitsch is a Vienna-based painter working primarily in figurative oil painting. In her works she explores how we relate to the material world in a time of overconsumption, digital distraction, and fleeting experiences—revealing memory, desire, and ambiguity in the everyday. Her paintings can be read as an act of distancing from the saturated present, moving toward states of calm, suspension, and near-emptiness. She combines naturalistic elements with subtle surreal or abstract qualities, using a limited, muted color palette, simplified compositions, and softly blurred, nearly out-of-focus forms. Through the use of still life, vague compositions, and contextual displacement, she transforms the familiar into quietly uncanny compositions. Her work repeatedly engages with domestic and (sub)urban settings as sites where nature and culture overlap, revealing how constructed environments shape our perception of the world. SOLO / DUO EXHIBITIONS • Catching Stillness — Graduation Exhibition, Oskar Kokoschka-Platz 2, Vienna, 2024 • Souvenir — Nest Operngasse, Vienna, 2020 • Schaufenster — Allergikercafe, Vienna, 2019 • Monstera deliciosa — Magdas Hotel, Vienna, 2018 SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS • At Last It Came Into Focus — curated by Robyn Graham, Warbling Collective, London, 2024 • A Suitcase Project — curated by David Mase & Benjamin Riedler, Picture Theory Gallery, New York, 2024 • Fort / Da — Artistic Interventions by the Eisler Class, Freud Museum, Vienna, 2024 • The bare minimum — Verein Fortuna, Vienna, 2024 • Hang me up to dry — Schaulager Vienna, 2023 • Elementare Gefäße. Zwischen Gebrauch und Kontemplation: eine andere Erzählung der Moderne — Villa Beer, Vienna, 2023 • Die kleine Violine — Kunstraum Messing Schwarz, Vienna, 2023 • Limb from limb — Kunstraum Messing Schwarz, Vienna, 2023 • Reality and other impossible things — curated by Nora Mayr, Angewandte Festival, University of Applied Arts, Vienna, 2022 • Die Bibliothek von Babel — Charim Gallery, Charim Factory, Vienna, 2022 • A Horse in the Jungle — Angewandte Festival, University of Applied Arts, Vienna, 2021 • Pale Desert Dialogues — Ikoloni, Malmö, 2019 • Frichorama 2019 — La Fileuse Reims, Reims, 2019 • Across the Sea — Dekalb Gallery, New York, 2019 • Let’s Walk — The Old Hairdressers, Glasgow, 2019 • Cognition — Rogart Street Campus, Glasgow, 2019 • Peace — Semperdepot, Vienna, 2018 SCHOLARSHIPS / RECOGNITION • Summer Academy Scholarship — Salzburg, 2023