Susanne Pirklbauer

I've been working with sugar for 4 years, inspired by the coffee house I run with my partner.

Sugar is a fascinating material of many different facets. It is crystalline, snow-white and can turn black when exposed to fire or melt into golden dots. It can take on different physical states and forms. Sugar has an exciting ambivalence: Sugar is very popular and frowned upon at the same time.

A life without sugar? Hard to imagine…

This variety of material forms and the polarity of sugar interest me most in my artistic work.

Here is an excerpt from a text by an art historian about my work:

In her artistic work, Susanne Pirklbauer plays with various levels of meaning & material qualities of sugar: well considered, with a hint of humor, cheeky and passionate; provocative, but also thoughtful and very gentle.

In doing so, she repeatedly elicits new facets from sugar and allows it to grow beyond itself constantly: abstract, figurative; black and white; in advert of color, as sugar pearls, sugar sticks or icing sugar: melted and caramelized.