Ellen Gallagher's work is complex, characterized by subtle structures which at first sight seem to give her paintings a high degree of minimalist abstraction. Frequently, the large-scale compositions are based on a grid structure whose order the American artist undermines by adding innumerable shapes arranged in series. The formal elements refer to the representations of the eyes and lips of African Americans as we know them from movies, photographs and comic strips. The artist takes these signs out of their original context, giving them new meaning by repetition and serial arrangement in the picture space.

"The signs are more or less fixed," explained Ellen Gallagher in a 2001 interview. "But their spatial proximity is always in flow, as my relationship to the signs changes over time. So they repeat their lines like performers and with each repetition experience themselves differently – which then isn't a repetition."

The "Watery Ecstatic" drawings (from 2001 onward), a selection of which will be on display at the Galerie im Taxispalais, show naturalistic and fantastic shapes which, according to Gallagher, might inhabit a mythical underwater world called Drexciya. Legend has it that Drexciya – which is also the name of a Detroit band – is the home of the women and children who died during the so-called "Middle Passage", being taken from Africa to America aboard slave ships.

Along with the "Watery Ecstatic" drawings and a selection of her paintings, Galerie im Taxispalais will also show Ellen Gallagher's 16mm films "Murmur" (made in collaboration with the Dutch artist Edgar Cleijne, 2003), mixed media works bringing together techniques such as drawing, clay and computer animation, in which the artist also worked directly on the film strip by scratching the emulsion layer.

Ellen Gallagher's exhibition at the Galerie im Taxispalais was prepared in close cooperation with the artist, it is her first solo show in Austria.

The artist was born in Providence, Rhode Island, USA, in 1965, she lives and works in New York and Rotterdam.