Inge
Miczka

Inge Miczka discovered her passion for art at a young age. Whether through experimenting with photo cameras, which her father gave her, or through the fascinated examination of artistic reduction, as she learned about cubism in art class - visual representation has been central to Inge Miczka's life.

Inge Miczka then learned the solid tools of her current artistic activity from scratch: after vocational training in the printing trade, she worked as a graphic designer and layout artist in various publishing houses. During her subsequent seven years as project manager and trainer for media design in a design agency, Inge Miczka also expanded her artistic-creative foothold as a freelancer. Today she has established herself as a visual artist, photographer and graphic designer. She attaches great importance to continuous artistic training, for example at the European Art Academy in Trier, and can point to exhibitions from her hometown to the Mumok in Vienna.

Inge Miczka's artistic work focuses on a world undergoing significant change. Against this background, the artist explores questions around the complex of themes of perception and cognition. To this end, she creates ambivalences and draws attention to connections and links that are not always obvious and often uncomfortable. For example, in certain groups of works she relates different media such as photography, digital image processing and painting to each other and raises critical questions that deal with perception in the context of media realities, for example with regard to truth and manipulation. The artistic core theme of perception and cognition also comes to the fore for Inge Miczka when her work deals with ecological grievances. For the artist, it is one of society's urgent tasks to deal with resources and values in a responsible and sustainable manner. There are clearer responsibilities here, namely for each person, and therefore also moments of insight for each individual due to the reception - and not always of a pleasant kind. Inge Miczka also sees herself in a dichotomy: due to some consumer temptations, self-imposed sustainability goals cannot always be achieved satisfactorily. But she is convinced that more conscious consumption can be the first step towards important changes for everyone.

Be it more formal or more content-based groups of works and forms of implementation: The constant in Inge Miczka's artistic work is to examine the fractures of being human through an interplay of perception and cognition, to open up the uncomfortable 'behind' as well as many a beautiful façade, to let an expectation be followed by a - clarifying - disappointment. Thus, her ambivalent works always contain conscious irritations, moments of recognition as well as impulses to reflect on one's own responsibility.

In order to achieve these artistic goals, the artist does not stop at a first found level of ideas in her work. Her aspirations go beyond that. Using the example of the 'Seafood' series, she does not merely show that waste is harmful and that waste avoidance or recycling is relevant. Inge Miczka takes the decisive steps further, incorporates adjacent themes and thus opens up a discourse on larger contexts through her work.

Text: Daniel Scheffel