Klimt - Longing for There

Nicola Hackl-Haslinger’s time travel to Klimt’s Cosmos

Gustav Klimt and the Art Nouveau period have fascinated the artist since her youth. For this series, she embarked on an enchanting search for traces in order to incorporate Gustav Klimt’s places of longing on Lake Attersee into her art.

"The characteristic emphasis on gold elements creates an interplay between surface and space. The gold, the depiction of the tree and the reference to the surface of the water make many connections to Gustav Klimt’s oeuvre. The result is a unique atmosphere that transports the viewer to a bygone era, almost into a fairy tale of their own. You are immersed in Nicola’s works. They initiate a desire to trace these places and absorb the landscapes."

BA MA Raphaela Hemetsberger, art Historian and curator

The Gem, The Walk, Beyond the Horizon, Summer Memento, The View, One Moment, The Dancer

Nicola Hackl-Haslinger shares a special interest in the atmosphere of the Gerlhamer Moor with Gustav Klimt, who created several landscape paintings at this special place. The artist went in search of traces here and experienced the originality, the universal beauty of this landscape and the timelessness in perfect silence. She succeeded in spanning the centuries of art and connecting the epochs intellectually and visually in her new series of works.

The Path

The photography shows a self-portrait in front of the large original cabinet from Klimt’s studio, created by the Wiener Werkstätte in 1903. The dress is a photography of the Gerlhamer Moor at the Attersee, where Klimt created some of his famous landscape paintings, the gold lines can be seen as lifelines and connections in the flow of time.

Longing for There

This work shows a self-portrait of the artist and symbolically expresses her striving for warmth, light and space - as an analogy to Klimt’s longed-for summer retreat on Lake Attersee. The dress is a photograph of the water surface of Lake Attersee, and can be seen as an abstracted landscape photograph. The gold dots are reflections in a double sense - as visible points of light on the surface of the water and in a figurative sense as beautiful moments of a summer - like shooting stars.

Klimt’s Key

This is an image of the original key of the cupboard from Klimt’s studio, 1903. The artist sees the key as a metaphorical invitation to viewers to delve into Klimt’s works and art in general, to go on a journey of discovery and uncover possible long-forgotten and hidden secrets.