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Black Hole

February 21, 2003

Alfred Hrdlicka at Galerie Ernst Hilger

e-flux

GALERIE ERNST
HILGER

Alfred
Hrdlicka, Hommage à Qualtinger, 1986, bronze, 17 x 14 x 19
cm

Alfred
Hrdlicka

I can’t think of a thing, but I notice some things.

Vernissage: 27 February, 19.00 hrs. (until 25 March)

ERNST HILGER GMBH.

A-1010 Wien, Dorotheergasse 5

T: +43-1-512 53 15

F: +43-1-513 91 26

e: hilger@hilger.at

www.hilger.at

On the occasion of Alfred Hrdlicka’s 75th birthday,GALERIE ERNST
HILGER is
showing selected works on the subject of portrait art.

A number of small bronzes from different cycles, such as “Schubert” or
“Wagner”, as well as large-scale sculptures, such as the portrait of
“Giordano Bruno”, are shown. Moreover, the exhibition provides a
comprehensive presentation of his graphic works, such as etchings
(“Pasolini Cycle”) or lithographs, as well as medium-sized ink and
crayon
drawings – especially from the seventies. These works are largely
called
studies or pictures accompanying his cycles which in themselves,
however,
are of a high artistic standard.

At the same time, the Willy-Brandt-Haus Berlin is staging an exhibition
“Alfred Hrdlicka – Zum 75. Geburtstag” ( Alfred Hrdlicka
– On his 75th
Birthday).

A catalogue and book is published in connection with the exhibition.

Below are excerpts from the catalogue text by Paul Kruntorad: “Dear
Alfred, ….”

” … ‘All art comes from flesh’. In a conversation back
in 1994 you put it
that way and said, ‘that without a picture of man, art is actually
nothing
but decoration, or entertainment …. Art that does not deal
directly with
human problems, with politics, with religion, with psychiatry – to
mention
just a few areas that I have dealt with – is not art.’ It
would come in
handy to call you a “critical realist”, and it would not even be that
wrong. After all, the criticism, exaggerated into polemics, can hardly
be
overlooked. In the long history of European art, ideas were the topics
of
art, the program for the pictures was conditioned by ideologies. And
that’s what the big graphic cycles are about – ‘Randolectil’ being
the
confrontation with psychiatry and its allegation that there is such a
thing as ‘normal’ human behavior, ‘Roll over Mondrian’ being a satire on
abstract art as a party game. Time and again these are secularized
versions of the medieval dance of death, demystifications of myths. I
think that when you look, you do not focus on the realities that
correspond to a convention on viewing, but you look behind the curtain
that veils society’s conventions, you look inside, at what dominates the
social structures – sexuality and violence. Your sculptures
– head and
torso, portrait bust and figure, carved out of stone in ‘taille directe’
–
always also refer to the work involved, they are definitely
anti-classicistic,” …. “Not the sculptures as such as realistic,
but your
manner of seeing things is so, in the sense that Freud and Ernst Mach
were
realists.”