Vienna’s Storm Gallery is set to host a compelling exhibition beginning February 26th, bringing together the distinct yet complementary artistic visions of Paulina Emilia Aumayr and Lorenzo Conforti. The show promises a dialogue between two research-driven practices, both deeply invested in exploring the psychological, physical, and structural aspects of contemporary life.
Exploring Inner Landscapes and Political Resistance
The exhibition juxtaposes introspective abstraction with politically charged imagery, offering viewers a space for contemplation and questioning.
- Paulina Emilia Aumayr’s work investigates the intersection of intimacy and power dynamics.
- Lorenzo Conforti creates abstract paintings that evoke unstable, psychological spaces.
- The exhibition highlights painting as a medium for critical and sensitive exploration.
- Both artists engage with the complexities of contemporary experience through distinct visual languages.
Aumayr (born 2002 in Vienna, and currently living and working there) navigates the space between painting and text. Currently a student at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, studying under Daniel Richter since 2021, her practice fearlessly confronts the subtle structures of patriarchal power, revealing the connections between intimacy and violence. Through a deliberate use of color, gesture, and language, Aumayr transforms feminist resistance into images brimming with tension, vulnerability, and direct confrontation.
Her work has been showcased in prominent galleries including Galerie Kandlhofer, Galerie Krinzinger, VinVin Galerie, Galerie Michael Bella, Weserhalle Berlin, and at the Parallel Art Fair.
Fusion of Anatomy and Abstraction
Conforti (born 1996 in Tolentino, and now working between Milan and Tolentino) develops a pictorial practice rooted in the merging of images drawn from diverse organic anatomies. His artistic journey began with music and graffiti, leading him to train at the Academy of Fine Arts in Urbino, where he co-founded the collective Hardchitepture (2019–2024)—a group dedicated to investigating environmental and scenographic installations. He later completed his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Milan.
Conforti’s paintings exist on the edge of abstraction, generating layered and hybrid forms that resist easy definition. These works become unstable interior landscapes, spaces where fragmentation, overload, and uncertainty coexist. For Conforti, painting remains uniquely capable of supporting the instability of beauty, revealing visions where matter is in constant flux and bodies fluctuate within evolving panoramas.
What role does painting play in understanding the complexities of the human experience? The exhibition suggests that painting doesn’t offer definitive answers, but instead opens up territories for pausing, observing, and questioning. It builds a dialogue between approaches that view painting as both a critical and sensitive field—a space of indeterminacy and perceptive complexity, and a place of political and affective resistance.
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