WHILE WALKING
16th of May - 25th of July 2026, Galerie Sophia Vonier, Salzburg

With Thomas Bernhard, walking is not just locomotion, but a way of thinking. Step by step, an inner monologue unfolds, which ignites with the movement, increases, falters and starts again. For him, walking means exposing himself to the world and moving away from it at the same time. It is a rhythmic process between control and loss of control. A similar distinction is made by Francis Alÿs: "A journey implies a destination, so many miles to be consumed, while a walk is its own measure, complete at every point along the way." The exhibition While Walking by Bettina Willnauer in the Galerie Sophia Vonier in Salzburg connects to this thinking figure and translates it into textile picture spaces. Their hand-tufted wall work does not arise from a fixed pictorial concept, but develops procedurally. Starting point are drawings or loose sketches, which are transformed in the course of the work. With the tufting machine, a tool reminiscent of an electric needle, the artist shoots wool into a stretched carrier material, mostly monk's cloth. Work is done on the back, while the picture is formed mirror-inverted on the front. This circumstance creates a productive shift between intention and result, between control and openness.
The method of tufting allows an immediate, almost gestural way of working. Colour is not applied, but inscribed in the fabric. Layer after layer, threads condense into soft, relief-like surfaces that fluctuate between image and object. Although these works are technically not woven, they are sometimes referred to as tapestries in extended language.
Bettina Willnauer's practice can be described as a "painting with wool". It works mainly with sheep's wool, the materiality of which characterises the process. The threads are not only carriers of colour, but also of structure, rhythm and movement. The resulting surfaces have a haptic quality that converts sight into an almost physical experience.

In their pictorial worlds, observations of the everyday are intertwine with imaginative, dreamlike elements. As you walk, it seems, fixed boundaries dissolve: reality and fiction begin to flow into each other. Birds, plants, animals, human figures and fragments of landscapes appear as memories or projections. They are condensations of perception, snapshots of a moving consciousness. Shoes that mark paths through cities, animals that appear as companions or opposites, plants and mushrooms that spread out and permeate spaces, all this forms an open dynamic structure.

Formally, the works are reminiscent of cartographic structures or cosmic views at the same time. Spherical forms, organic lines and colourintensive surfaces overlap to form vibrating compositions. The wall work looks like windows into independent picture spaces, in which depth and surface, proximity and distance shift. An important reference is the textile practice of the Swedish-Norwegian textile artist Hannah Ryggen (1894 – 1970), whose works established the medium of the fabric as the carrier of narration and attitude. While Hannah Ryggen negotiated political and social content in her tapestries,

Bettina Willnauer is more interested in the poetic and perception-related dimensions of textiles. Nevertheless, both have a view of textile as an independent form of image that positions itself between art and craftsmanship, between tradition and the present. While Walking unfolds as an exhibition about being on the road, a visual walk along lines, colours and structures. A walk that does not arrive, but constantly opens up new spaces. A thinking in motion that is inscribed in threads and becomes visible again as an image.

Text: Barbara Horvath

 Photos: Hendrik Stoltenberg