it's all about something that was missing before. Iris Kojaman
13.02.-08.03.2026
Opening: 12.02.2026 | 19:00
Lindengasse 51, 1070 Vienna
What was missing — and what is here now? How can one depict a presence that was there only moments ago and has already slipped away, or one that remains hidden? Is the intention of a figure enough to anchor a sense of presence in an image? Does it matter whether presence is visible, or simply implied? Iris Kojaman’s new works revolve around these questions: around absence, around traces of presence, around spaces shaped by bodies who are no longer there.
Kojaman’s artistic roots lie in figurative painting. In her early work, the body functioned as the starting point of each composition, from which the surrounding pictorial space unfolded. Over time, the focus shifted: the environment gained weight, until the figure gradually receded as representation. In recent years, her practice has increasingly opened toward abstraction. Through a process of reduction, forms are simplified, planes set against one another, and color becomes an autonomous force within the composition.
In the new body of work presented in It’s all about something that was missing before, the figure returns — not as depiction, but as idea, as trace, as absence, as a form dissolving into space. In some works, figures remain legible; in others, they are barely perceptible; in others still, they exist only as a suggested relationship between forms. Kojaman follows the afterimage of presence in space and the subtle tensions that arise between figures and their surroundings.
Formally, this new visual language emerges through a collage-like process. Painted paper elements become building blocks of the composition, from which shapes develop and are integrated into the canvas. These collage elements create a network of relationships between color, texture, and surface. Large, calm fields of color are set against smaller, fragmentary forms. At the same time, the works unfold through layers of painterly gestures: translucent washes, dense passages of paint, brush marks and overpaintings accumulate, while colors shimmer through one another. The result is a body of work that forgoes illusionistic depth yet unfolds in layers and planes— a visual structure of presence and concealment, of visibility and permeability.
In the end, the questions return: What was missing? What is here now? The exhibition remains a process of searching rather than answering. It offers space for what cannot be fixed or defined. Each painting begins this search anew. “Every figure is a struggle” — and perhaps this is the decisive point: not in offering resolution, but in keeping the question open.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Iris Kojaman (*1981, Austria), also known as Iris Nemecek, is a Vienna-based visual artist whose practice spans painting and collage. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, graduating in 2006, and has exhibited widely in Austria, Switzerland, the United States, and beyond. Her work has been shown in solo exhibitions, including Jolly Roger at the MUSA Museum in Vienna and Blue Pool at Black Dragon Society in Los Angeles, and has appeared at international venues such as Scope Miami, New York, and London.
She lives and works in Vienna and Eichgraben, Austria.
