Sibylle Wagner

Sibylle Wagner was born in Stuttgart in 1952. Between 1972 and 1977 she studied Art and German in Heidelberg, Reutlingen and Karlsruhe. She spent the academic year 1977-78 at the Akademie der Künste, Stuttgart. In 1981 she established a studio in Karlsruhe for Painting and Performance Art. She was also a founder member of the 1. Karlsruher Produzentengalerie (in existence from 1981 to 1987), and of the Ateliergemeinschaft Ettlingen (in existence from 1984 to 1986). Between 1985 and 1994 she spent three months of each year in India. In 1991 she won the first prize for painting awarded at 'Le Rendez-vous de l'Imaginaire' organized by the Relais Culturel, Wissembourg, and in 1997 the 'Götz-und-Moritz- Preis', awarded in Freiburg. Since 1987 she has lived and worked in Wintzenbach, Elsaß.

Wagner works in the borderland between the various artistic categories. Working essentially as a painter, she nonetheless combines painting with installation, and photography with video. In doing so, she makes use of a very wide range of materials - for example, plexiglass. Central to her performance art, installations and video sculptures is the integration of instrumental music, and of dramatic and poetic elements. Since the 1980s she has used these very effectively to merge the lyrical and the conceptual. 

​Performance art and work with video (selection)
 
1982 »Aktionen ums Bett« (16-hour all-night performance with a range of artists from different disciplines), 1. Karlsruher Produzentengalerie, Karlsruhe
1988 »microchrom« (music and painting performance; music by Helmut Bieler-Wendt and Sabine Schäfer), Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Karlsruhe
1989 »cinq cycles« (image and music installation; music by Sabine Schäfer; part of »MultiMediale I«), Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie, Karlsruhe
1990 »meurtières bleues« (installation at the Stadtmauer; part of the exhibition »le rendez-vous de l'imaginaire«), Wissembourg; »Bombay movements« (video made with Lothar Quinte)
1993 »Lothar Quinte in Indien« (film portrait, part of the Lothar Quinte retrospective), Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe
1994 »eye-light painting« (music and video performance; musik by Joachim Krebs; part of the multi-media presentation »projektionen«), Orgelfabrik, Karlsruhe
1996 »light-painting« (video performance), Tollhaus, Karlsruhe
 
Individual exhibitions (selection)
 
1986 Galerie Rottloff, Karlsruhe
1989 Galerie Cuenca, Ulm
1990 Goethe-Institut, Bombay
1992 Galerie am Stadtmuseum, Düsseldorf
1993 Galerie Rasche, Freiburg
1994 Galerie Rottloff, Karlsruhe
1995 Stadttheater, Oberhausen
1996 Galerie Hensel und Mages, Karlsruhe
 
Group exhibitions (selection)
 
1990/91 »le rendez-vous de l'imaginaire«, Relais Culturel, Wissembourg
1995 »Neuentdeckungen in der Galerie«, Galerie Walter Bischoff, Stuttgart
1996 »Lyrische Abstraktionen«, Galerie Schloss Mochental; »Kunst und Kunstoff«, Neckarwerke, Stuttgart
1997 »Räume«, Sparkasse Esslingen-Nürtingen, subsequently at Sparkasse Ravensburg

[Frauke Syamken, 1997]