Katrin Plavčak (1970, Gütersloh, Germany) grew up in Zeltweg, Austria, and lives and works in Vienna and Stuttgart. Working across painting, drawing, music, text, and performance, Plavčak has developed a distinctive artistic practice that combines sharp observation, humour, and poetic imagination. Her paintings often bring together figures, animals, objects, and fragments of language in vividly coloured, narrative compositions that move fluidly between the everyday and the absurd, the personal and the political.

A graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Plavčak has been an influential presence within the Austrian contemporary art scene since the 1990s. Her work explores questions of identity, social conventions, popular culture, and collective memory, often employing irony and visual wit to challenge established systems of meaning. Alongside her visual art practice, she has been active as a musician and performer, bringing a literary and performative sensibility to her work.

Plavčak’s work has been exhibited extensively in Austria and internationally, including presentations at the Kunsthalle Wien, Belvedere 21, Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz, and the Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, among many others. Through a practice that is at once playful, critical, and deeply human, she continues to expand the possibilities of contemporary painting as a space for storytelling, reflection, and resistance.