Mario Neugebauer has a strong tendency to work on large-format canvas, using oil and lacquer as his common materials.His latest productions start to take a further step in leaving the two-dimensionality. They conquer space by developing into installations. Both the paintings and the installations are unied by their reflection and their play with room. room as the physical reality and room as a mentally perceived and constructed idea. Another connecting link of his dominant art forms might be the usage of tire traces. Apart from some illusionist- figurative- fragments, such as the tires, his paintings mostly show abstract elements, that can work for the beholder like a Rorschach test:
Neugebauer does not want to show the evident or the obvious, he wants to allow the contemplator his own individual and emotional perception
One dominant tendency in his work may be his handling of space and three-dimensionality, and another one a showing of “fragments”- rather than self-contained narrative pictures; after establishing illusionist and superjacent spaces – for example with his recurrent hanging elements (that might resemble ropes)- he then destabilizes this three-dimensionality with material interventions- such as colour splatters. His works may appear fragmentary like cinematic frames, because of a tension or motion provoked by overlapping spaces- that can leave the beholder with the feeling, that Neugebauers spaces might not end within their frames… Insofar his paintings can be understood as an invitation to meet your own imagination or memories. The subconscious.
Neugebauer is working at the University of Fine Arts, Vienna as an assistant for the „Sound lab“ and studying there at the painting class of Prof. Daniel Richter. In his early years a certain affinity for moto-cross and cars lead him to an apprenticeship as a coachwork constructor. Elements of this love, such as tires and their traces can still be found in his current paintings and installations. His second passion- music- brought him to the field of music production, composing and sound mastering- with a special focus on electronic music.
His work is generally known and appreciated for the fusion of bar crooning and electronic music- as for example his production „Louie Austen“. His painted works reflect a similar working method as his music: a rather compository than conceptual approach.
