In his first institutional solo exhibition in Germany, the Austrian artist Stefan Reiterer (*1988 in Waidhofen an der Thaya, lives and works in Vienna) presents expansive works that impressively combine digital and analog techniques.
The exhibition at the MgK includes both new productions and an overview of earlier works, providing insight into the artist’s development. Reiterer works with digital media such as 3D prints, which he then paints using analog techniques. This creates an exciting interplay between a visibly hand-painted image and its digital origin – the boundaries between real presence and virtual construction become deliberately permeable. For the exhibition, the artist is creating a large- scale, walk-in painting on both floors, occupying the entire floor of the space. Paintings on canvas, sculptural objects, and textile elements transform the space into a visual field in which abstraction, architecture, and pictorial space intertwine.
The exhibition title, “Inflection Point,” refers to the moment of fundamental change: a tipping point at which perspectives shift, systems become unstable, or new directions emerge. Against this backdrop, Reiterer’s works offer a critical yet poetic perspective on our increasingly unstable, mediatized world.
Reiterer studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. His works have been exhibited internationally, including in São Paulo, Mexico City, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, London, Prague, and Berlin. His works are included in important collections such as the Belvedere Vienna, the State Collection of Lower Austria, the Austrian Federal Collection, and the CCA Andratx in Mallorca. Reiterer is co-running the artist-run-space new jörg together with Axel Koschier in Vienna.
The exhibition is a collaboration with Phileas – The Austrian Office for Contemporary Art. We sincerely thank you for your generous support.
Ground Floor
Stefan Reiterer’s art explores digital imagery and the question of how we perceive spaces. He works with computer-generated images that depict or evoke real places. He transforms these digital templates into paintings, altering them so drastically that their origins are barely recognizable. The result is series of works in which digital technology and hand-painted art meet – images in which the boundaries between virtual space and the real environment blur. Reiterer’s works oscillate between non-representational painting and concrete references to reality.
For the exhibition Inflection Point, Reiterer has created two expansive, walk-in paintings from his Texture Mapping series, which he has been developing continuously since 2011. On the ground floor, a large-scale oil painting on fabric unfolds, covering the entire floor. Yellow swirls and eddies create a dynamic picture surface that appears to move upon entering the installation. Form and color combine to form a unity that transforms the space both visually and physically.
At the center of this floor work is the newly created sculpture Formant,
which Reiterer designed on the computer and had milled from Styrofoam using CNC technology. The openwork, abstract form is reminiscent of organic structures and acts as an interface between body and space. It is painted illusionistically and integrates fragments of an earlier work that have been inscribed into the new form.
The interplay of painted floor and sculptural object opens up a sensual field of tension between surface, volume, and perception. Painting, sculpture, and space enter into a dialogue in which digital construction and analog gesture merge impressively.
The triptych Tangent (III-V) also combines painterly precision with a seemingly digital aesthetic. The three adjacent panels depict amorphous, elliptical forms in bright yellow, inscribed in a deep, partly cosmic-looking pictorial space. This is permeated by dark, swirling colors – with hints of fire, nebula, or galaxies – creating a strong visual dynamic.
The yellow shapes appear like recesses or incisions, both three-dimensional and flat – a play on spatial perception. Their smooth, artificial-looking surfaces are reminiscent of digital renderings, yet the painting technique betrays their analog origins. This tension between virtual appearance and painterly reality is central to Reiterer’s work. The painterly works are formally connected to the sculpture Formant through their “holes” and allow viewers to move between different levels of image and space. Painting, sculpture, and space combine to form a vibrant unity that invites us to take a closer look – and delve deeper.
“It’s an exploration of space and how it can be represented through painting or altered with simple means, whether analog, digital, or architectural. My work currently always moves in connection with or in the context of painting.” Stefan Reiterer
Upper Floor
Room I
A monumental, walk-in artwork from the Texture Mapping series unfolds upstairs in cool blue and warm yellow. A semicircular element on the floor connects the first two rooms, creating a spatial unity. The colors are applied gesturally, generating a dynamic effect that forms a striking contrast to the three small-format works from the Images series.
In the exhibition Inflection Point, a floor work from the series connects both levels of the museum into a continuous spatial installation. On the ground floor, the yellow paint unfolds in dynamic swirls, while upstairs bold, gestural lines dominate the scene. Here, the warm yellow meets an expansive blue painting that transforms the spatial experience. The blue paint forms into a semicircle at both ends of the upper floor, influencing the perception of the space.
The title Texture Mapping refers to a key process in digital 3D graphics: two- dimensional image surfaces—known as textures—are projected onto three-dimensional models to visually design their surfaces. This technique, familiar from video games, digital animation, and virtual reality applications, strongly shapes today’s visual culture. Stefan Reiterer translates this digital principle into his analog, sculptural painting. In his Texture Mapping series, he paints large-scale fabric panels that are either stretched over wooden structures or freely installed in space. These resemble digitally generated textures laid over an invisible geometry—as if Reiterer has translated a 3D model from the virtual world into real space.
“Since 2011, I’ve been working with installations—painted, stretched fabric panels or shaped MDF boards that define exhibition spaces, their architecture, and sightlines. The works I’m currently making are also either object-like or create an illusion of spatiality, moving away from classical formats,” says the artist.
In the Images series, Stefan Reiterer transforms satellite images and other maps into small-format paintings on wood. He fragments, distorts, and abstracts the images so thoroughly that their origins become nearly unrecognizable. For the artist, this is a playful process—from a source image to a unique, non-representational creation.
The painterly execution creates ambiguous visual spaces: situated between digital cartography and abstraction, they invite reflection on visibility, data control, and the role of painting in a highly technological world. The dynamic, sometimes impasto brushwork and the intimate format of the works demand close observation.
Room II
On the left wall is Template X, which originated from a map view of the city of Berlin. The original bird’s-eye perspective has been digitally altered so extensively that the work appears almost abstract. The sculptural MDF form has been treated with finely graded shades of oil paint, creating an organically textured surface. On the opposite wall, a painted 3D print protrudes into the space, engaging in a formal dialogue with the other works in the exhibition.
In the Templates series, Stefan Reiterer explores the interplay between digital image worlds and analog painting. The starting point is digital map data—satellite images or Google Maps views— whose visual structures he first collages and then imports into 3D programs like Cinema 4D. There, complex models emerge, whose surfaces and volumes Reiterer compresses, stretches, or distorts. Topographical information is thus transformed into amorphous, abstract shapes that are neither clearly legible nor easily locatable.
From this dynamic image space, Reiterer selectively chooses specific perspectives to translate into an analog visual language using classical oil painting on MDF or aluminum. These resulting works are characterized by high precision, strong illusionistic power, and sculptural presence in space.
The Template series is exemplary of Reiterer’s media-reflective practice. It illustrates how deeply our visual perception is influenced by digital image processing—and what aesthetic potential can arise from its artistic transformation. As Stefan Reiterer puts it:
“It’s a game that blends abstraction and figuration, clarity and ambiguity. Maybe it started with my diploma at the Academy, which dealt with the interplay between pixel and vector graphics and how these can relate to painting. I’m interested in when amorphous, microscopic, or macroscopic structures shift into the representational. When blurry, glowing vessels suddenly become nighttime street scenes—viewed from an airplane. I think it’s beautiful when a vast space for interpretation opens up. In my eyes, there’s nothing more boring than quickly grasped art reduced to a single reading.”
Room III
This room presents larger paintings from the Images series. For these works, the artist applies oil paint vertically in several layers. This creates streaks of color that oscillate between plasticity, depth, and pure abstraction.
Template VII from 2022 imitates something sculptural through illusionistic painting. The image’s origin remains unclear and fascinates with its dynamic interplay of form and brushwork.
Room IV
Here you see one of the new large sculptures, Formant II, presented for the first time in this exhibition. The work is wall-mounted and extends plastically into the space. Unlike earlier pieces from the Formant series, the surface here is painted in a way that creates seemingly three-dimensional forms and dimensions.
The sculptural form enters into a dialogue with an early photo collage from 2017 and the flat painting Template XII.
In the Formant series, Stefan Reiterer uses digital modeling to create organically inspired forms, which he then materializes as sculptural objects using 3D printing. He treats their surfaces with
various painterly techniques. The larger sculptures consist of a Styrofoam core, cut into shape using CNC technology.
The early works from 2020 are mostly rendered in uniform colors, emphasizing the sculptural presence of the forms. Instead of hanging traditionally on the wall, they extend directly into the room.
In the newer works, shown for the first time in this exhibition, Reiterer covers the surfaces with illusionistic patterns that waver between physical objecthood and painted flatness. In doing so, our perception is deliberately challenged.
Room V
This room contains two works from the Template series, created in 2024 for an exhibition in China. These paintings on aluminum are marked by a particular dynamism and a highly abstract visual language.
In the corner of the room, there is a sculptural-painterly work from the Images series. On a malleable support material, Stefan Reiterer has applied linear yellow/orange structures on a dark background and positioned the piece freely in the space.
(Press release by Wilko Austermann)
