HYLE
July 3–November 8, 2026
Dornbirn
Austria
With HYLE, Kunstraum Dornbirn presents the first institutional solo exhibition in Austria by Michail Pirgelis. Born in Essen in 1976, raised in Greece and based in Cologne, the artist has developed a large-scale installation for the historic assembly hall—monumental works in dialogue with its spatial conditions, and at the same time a statement on the concept of sculpture.
For more than twenty years Pirgelis has sourced windows, outer walls and floor panels from decommissioned aircraft, selected in the graveyards of the Mojave Desert and processed in his Cologne studio. Each work begins with the readymade gesture but decisively goes beyond it: through stripping, grinding, polishing and deliberate fragmentation, an abstraction emerges that is not constructed but uncovered. Where Minimalism aims at control, Pirgelis’s surfaces remain deliberately imperfect: scratches produce graphic elements, traces of paint gestural qualities—marks of use and time. In the assembly hall, the material history of the works meets the industrial history of the building: both tell of use, wear and transformation.
Hyle, the Greek word for matter, denotes the as yet unformed mass; in Aristotle it is always conceived in relation to morphe, form. Neither exists without the other. For Pirgelis this precisely describes his own practice. Yet hyle means more than raw material: it also signifies potential, the as-yet-undecided. His sculptures are formed but not finished; the work remains in motion for as long as it is looked at.
You can find more information on our website: Michail Pirgelis—Kunstraum Dornbirn
