ENDLICHER | HÜPFNER
Much more than that
14 March - 6 June 2024

Language as a starting point and working material - this is precisely where our exhibition of works by Michael Endlicher and Kurt Hüpfner comes in. While Michael Endlicher has devoted himself entirely to language, whether presented in performance and video or captured in images, writing is a daily companion for Kurt Hüpfner, but has only found its way selectively into his works. Two writing artists and critics meet - they question and provoke.

Michael Endlicher experiments with words and letters in his works; the exhibition shows works from three groups of works: Critical Paintings, Drama Sheets and Letter Paintings. Endlicher questions how art is talked about - in his critical paintings he quotes art critics, theorists and reflections on art. He takes statements out of context, puts them on the canvas and turns words into images. The critically smug undertone in the selection of quotations is almost impossible to ignore, as they are always meaning-laden, almost incomprehensible formulations.

The language is based on a system of vocabulary and grammar - similarly, there is also a clear system in Endlicher's drama sheets: Each letter corresponds to a numerical value based on its position in the alphabet: A = 1, B = 2, C = 3 ... Z = 26. If you add up the individual letter values in words, you get a specific number for each word. Each sheet shows three words and the valid numerical value above them.

At the center of the exhibition is the artwork MUCH MORE THAN THAT - composed of 16 letter paintings. Each canvas of the series shows a letter, a number or a punctuation mark, which can be endlessly reassembled according to the set box principle. It is a maybe banal but, if you like, meaningful sentence that makes us even more aware of the empty phrases that surround us.

Growing up during the Second World War, Kurt Hüpfner was shaped by his experiences during the war and the post-war reconstruction. Throughout his life, he was afraid of the next crisis, followed political events closely and questioned the meaningfulness of life. This skepticism is also evident in the formulations in his works - which, strictly speaking, simply make no sense and follow no concept.

This places him in the tradition of the Dadaists of the early 20th century, who manifested the senselessness of the First World War with their ironic, anarchistic anti-art. They experimented with the generally accepted concept of art and declared everyday objects to be art objects. Senselessness, chance, improvisation and provocation were the main focus. The same applies to Kurt Hüpfner, his works are not planned but are created intuitively, there are no material limits - he uses what he has at home and the viewer often searches in vain for the meaning behind the work.

Text: Selin Stütz-Staudinger

Herbert Achternbusch. Painter and sculptor
6th October to 3rd November 2022

Herbert Achternbusch - writer, director, painter, actor, sculptor, set designer. He is best known today as a writer, filmmaker and riot maker of the 1970s and 1980s, but originally was a visual artist.

Born in 1938, painting has played an Important role in the life of the all-rounder from the very beginning. Back in the 1950s, when he was still attending high school in Deggendorf, Achternbusch was already painting watercolors and oil paintings. He orientated himself towards classical modernism and discovered Vincent van Gogh, whom he greatly admired. In 1961 he finally went to study painting at the art academy in Nuremberg, two years later he attended the art academy in Munich for a short time. Even then he wrote: “You can’t make art. It must come. And what comes is to be respected.”

For Achternbusch, painting was something intuitive: “The pictures are made from a different point of view, from the subconscious, and also speak differently, while a story always runs through the mind; a picture doesn't have to go beyond reason.” However, it is wrong to speak of Achternbusch “only” as a painter, sculptor, writer or filmmaker – the work in different genres is mutually dependent and builds on one another. This is how images are created in relation to text creations and there is hardly a publication without rich illustrations made by him.

The exhibition shows early works, the series In the Dusk created at the turn of the year 1987/88 to his confrontation with ancient themes in the 2000s. The presentation of bronze and wooden sculptures - which come directly from Achternbusch's (studio) house in the Waldviertel - is particularly special. In the early 1990s, the artist begins painting and designing the entire house and so creates a total work of art. He says himself: "Only in the Waldviertel do I always like to leave something of me behind, a painted wall or a figure nailed on the wall."

The highlight of the exhibition is the series In the Dusk - it consists of eight works in total, with only five being presented in the show. It was first shown in 1988 in the traveling exhibition Herbert Achternbusch. The painter, which made stops in Munich, Berlin, Dusseldorf, Vienna and Hamburg. Each work in the series is based on a poem by Achternbusch from the early 1960s, some of which have already been published. They have been cut out and glued to the work and incorporated. Dusk, the transition from day to night - from night to day, where things become gloaming and new possibilities open up. As always, Achternbusch let himself drift in the creation of the series: "I mixed them with the motifs, as coincidence once again suggested to me..."

The series is exemplary for the different levels of meaning that can be found in Achternbusch's works. Different levels of time collide when his own past in form of the poems encounters the present of the work process. Again, the text is neither described nor supplemented by the painting but opens an additional level of imagination. His pictures, like texts and films, do not refer to themselves and what they obviously represent, but go beyond themselves.

Text: Selin Stütz
 
Parallel to our exhibtition is a retrospective in Filmarchiv Austria „Herber Achternbusch. Bayrischer Weltfilmer“.
 

 

 

ALL IN 2.0
16. Nov - 21 Dec 2023

The exhibition shows a collection of works by the artists of the Galerie Dantendorfer - Peter Baldinger, BENKA, Christian Brandtner, Kurt Hüpfner, Marianne Lang, Petra Lupe, Christine Mayr and Adrian Uncrut.

Peter Baldinger – Dissolution is the central concern in Baldinger's oeuvre, whether through square grids or making the motif unrecognizable by blurring it. He asks himself the question: How much information is necessary to recognize an image motif? Or the other way around: How much image resolution is possible so as not to completely lose the motif?

BENKA – With his art, BENKA wants to encourage viewers to question digitalization and the use of smartphones and artificial intelligence in our everyday lives. The artist is interested in the complex interaction between humans and machines and the associated opportunities and dangers.

Christian Brandtner - found objects, animal bones, modeling clay - a world in flux in which there are always new landscapes, creatures and metamorphoses to discover. The exceptional Viennese artist Christian Brandtner creates his own microcosm of opposites.

Kurt Hüpfner – painter, sculptor, draftsman, author, visionary and much more. Despite, or perhaps precisely because, he worked in secret for so long, he developed his own, powerful visual language. With this he reflects on the art historical and political developments of the 20th century.

Marianne Lang – Marianne Lang’s central medium of representation is drawing – in the broadest sense – she experiments with different techniques, materials and perspectives. The topic that always concerns her is: nature. It's not just about observing nature, but about the space between nature and people.

Petra Lupe – From canvas, paper and sewing to objects, the artist calls it “working on trial and error”. Working in series is particularly important for Lupe, because only through repeated engagement with a topic or material can she penetrate it deeper and work her way forward layer by layer.

Christine Mayr – The artist began to deal with the complexity of growing up, being a child, being a mother and simply being human in the 80s. Mayr's drawings and sculptures are sensitive, empathetic, courageous, provocative and direct all in one.

Adrian Uncrut – The topics that concern Uncrut are personal, everyday and, above all, human. His use of materials in sculpture and drawing is striking. He mixes bronze, epoxy resin, iron, stainless steel, wood, rubber, plaster and often recycled finds and shapes them into independent works.

Petra Lupe | tabula rasa
PARALLEL VIENNA 2022
6 - 11 Sept 
Semmelweisklinik, Wien
Haus A, 3. Stock, Raumnummer A302
 
"Probably the emptiness contains a maximum of fullness"
(Lupe 2022)
 
When we talk about tabula rasa (scraped panel) in this case, we don’t mean the soul of a newborn that the old philosophers imagined, which sees the light of day like a blank page, rather we are talking about an emptiness, which has a certain undertone. Today we know about a collective unconscious, genetic or systemic dispositions that impose a certain imprint on everyone who comes in this world right from the start. In this sense, tabula rasa resembles a paradox insofar as its emptiness has already been slightly filled.
 
Petra Lupe cannot help but to include the location - the Semmelweis Women's Clinic as a former place of birth - in her presentation. To take on its basic tone, its character and to pick it up thematically in what is shown.
 
When you enter the room, two symbols immediately catch the eye of the spectator. On the one hand is the circle, whereby Lupe's open circles are characterized by their open circular shape, which indicates permeability both to the outside and the inside. On the other hand, there is the color pink, reminiscent of the purity of a newborn.
 
At first glance, the works on paper only reveal their form. If one comes closer, the different imprints become apparent, which finally unfold their full power in colored acrylic glass objects. The color continues in the schematic nude photographs, reminiscent of the vulnerability of being human.
 
Finally, this wall is dominated by two large canvas works IN UTERO, which indicate on the inside of an uterus in their toning and layering. In the end, Lupe understands the artistic process itself as an act of giving birth, located between fullness and emptiness. The real feat is to give a personal stamp on it, but only to the extent that a collective truth can still be found, in which the spectator can reflect him*herself.

 

 

 

BENKA @Parallel 2023
5 - 10 Sep 2023

With his art, BENKA wants to encourage viewers to question digitization and the use of smartphones and artificial intelligence in our everyday lives. The artist is interested in the complex interaction between man and machine and the associated opportunities and dangers.

Symbol of the robotization of our society in BENKA's art is the term CAPTCHA, which forms the title of each painting. A captcha is an automated sequence of numbers and/or letters that is intended to check whether the user is a human or a machine. In his works, too, letters and numbers form the basis, which is completed by an intuitive, raw application of paint.

Kurt Hüpfner - Vom Erahnen der Welt
im Gasthof Schloss Aigen, Salzburg

27th July to 24th August 2022

“The world reveals itself in a lurking state; as a chill putting its knife to our throats, or as a sluggish torrent diverted by evil intentions.”
Kurt Hüpfner, 1998

Kurt Hüpfner has spent almost his entire life away from the art world and has created an impressive oeuvre consisting of over 2500 drawings, almost 200 sculptures, 120 paintings and numerous assemblages and collages. Despite, or perhaps precisely because, he worked in secret for so long, he developed an independent, powerful visual language. With this he reflects on the art historical and political developments of the 20th century.

Born in 1930, he grew up in Vienna during the Second World War. His youthful memories are shaped by bombing raids, air raid shelters and post-war chaos. These traumatic experiences flow into his entire work. From 1947 to 1950 he completed an apprenticeship as a commercial graphic designer at the Higher Graphic Teaching and Research Institute in Vienna. In 1961 he began to engage deeply with art, as well as an intensive practice of drawing - the result was primarily nature studies. During a visit to Paris, Hüpfner met the écriture automatique of the Surrealists, he started to experiment with automatic drawing - which is not planned, but rather arises without the control of consciousness. This medium accompanies the artist until today, many of the resulting drawings were later processed into sculptures or paintings.

In 1963 the artist created his first sculpture with Lady with a beautiful hairstyle, which is characterized by a radical reduction of physiological features to simple geometric forms. This reduction to the surface and form runs through the further work. Hüpfner says himself: "I'm only interested in the shape, then I pour in the content."

The themes that concern the artist range from history to religion and myth to the world of premonition. Tragic heroes from mythology and religion can often be found in his oeuvre. The concept of the omen plays a lasting role, in Hüpfner's understanding the feeling of the presence of "an invisible third party", he calls it the "numinous" - horrifying and fascinating at once. In doing so, he distances himself from the Christian faith and remains in a decidedly pessimistic mood: "Light figures, for me they don't exist. But I do believe in the darkness that is so threatening.” This is how the central work series Omen came about, which documents the numinous in the form of everyday encounters with people and things.

In his oeuvre, Kurt Hüpfner gives the viewer an insight into the events, religion and myths of our world. Each work of art bears its personal signature of contour, surface and form - it gives us an idea of how the artist perceives the world.

Text: Selin Stütz

 

Christian Brandtner | Transformation
11 May - 29 June 2023


Found objects, animal bones, modeling clay - a world in transition, where we can discover new landscapes, creatures and metamorphoses. The exceptional Viennese artist Christian Brandtner creates his own microcosm.

Even as a child and adolescent, Brandtner felt a great affinity for drawing. After encountering the art of van Gogh, he began his own artistic activity, which ultimately led to training as a theater painter. In addition to this, an independent artistic work is growing, which ranges from representational painting and drawing to sculptural objects.

Brandtner is interested in contrasts - surface texture, shape differences or contrasting colors - they symbolize life and death, good and evil, top and bottom. Within these poles there are recurring elements in the works, such as the egg, clothespin, eye or arrow. When visiting the artist's studio, one quickly thinks of a cabinet of art and curiosities. The objects impress not only with the variety of materials and detailed work, but also give the impression that they are almost living beings.

The exhibition focuses on the latest series "Tardigrade", in which Brandtner works on the 500-million-year-old tardigrades. Tardigrades are sub-millimeter small creatures that have the extraordinary ability to adapt to the most extreme living conditions. They survive in space, in the arctic or at the deepest point of the sea. The animals are able to reduce their metabolic activity so much that they enter a near-death state and can remain there for decades. It was precisely this adaptability that inspired Brandtner, who transformed the robust tardigrades into flying objects reminiscent of the scientific achievements of the 20th century.

The works from the "Egg Transformation" series impress with their details, in which eggshells, wood, wire, glass, leaves and modeling clay are formed into small art objects. In numerous religions and cultures, the egg stands for creation, life, resurrection - this is how it finds its way into Brandtner's work and becomes the breeding ground for new beings and forms.

Text: Selin Stütz

Marianne Lang | we are nature

25th May to 29th June 2022

Marianne Lang's central medium is drawing - in the broadest sense - she experiments with different techniques, materials and perspectives. From the „classic“ pencil drawing to engraving on glass and drawing with a soldering iron, she finds a wide variety of approaches. What is special about Lang's drawings is the way the technique is matched to the motif - fire drawings meet moths, as well as silverpoint on black canvas and plants that only show their full splendor at night. The central theme is nature. Whereby it is not about pure nature observation and representation of natural phenomena, but about the space between nature and human beings. How we live in nature, how we deal and coexist with it.

"The house in the green" - many people associate these words with a deep desire for a place of peace and relaxation, an oasis, untouched and secluded, where you can unwind and escape from everyday life. Marianne Lang has turned this into a series of works in which the tension between human being and nature is addressed. The series shows buildings and interiors that are not carried by walls and windows or inhabited by furniture and decor in the classic way, but whose outlines are represented by vegetation. The motifs are real existing houses and interiors, some of which are adapted and expanded by the artist.

The concept of space underlies the series and Lang's art in general. Using the example of the House in the open, Lang shows interior and exterior spaces that are only enlivened by objects and people. The question arises as to what role nature has in these spaces. Is it an integral part of our living spaces? And if so, under what conditions? Many have the desire to be in nature, to experience and also to protect it. But which spaces can actually still be called “natural”? Maybe we live in a man-made "nature" after all?

A similar approach to the infiltration and merging of outside and inside, private and public, as well as nature and people can be found in the Double Sights series. In doing so, Lang superimposes two motifs, reminiscent of the photographic technique of double exposure. The decisive factor is that the motifs are a landscape and an interior. At first glance, the works invite you to dream about a table by the lake side or a sofa in the park. But in our fast-moving world, in which the boundaries between online and offline, private and professional are thinner than ever before, a closer look may also give rise to the desire for a separation of these living spaces.

We are nature - the exhibition should raise the awareness of visitors to their relationship with nature and their habitats. And maybe some will ask themselves afterwards: Are we nature?

Text: Selin Stütz

 

BALDINGER. Danse Macabre
19 January - 16 February 2023

Resolution is the central concern in Baldinger's oeuvre, whether through square grids or blurring of the motif. It also returns to the fore in Baldinger's most recent works reworking Holbein's Pictures of Death.

To this day, art history does not have a clear definition of the motif of the dance of death, the first known representations go back to the 14th century. What unites them all is their message: "All people are equal in death."

1526 Hans Holbein the Younger created 41 woodcut designs on the theme of the Dance of Death, which were published in 1538 as a book by Hans Holbein. As an innovation compared to medieval dances of death, Holbein divided the dance-like procession of the dying into separate individual images in which the death meets individual representatives of the estates. Holbein's cycle begins with the creation, he progresses to the fall of man, the expulsion from paradise, comes to the fates of individual professional and social groups and finally ends with the Last Judgment. What is special about Holbein's Dance of Death is the enumeration of the individual fates according to status. The first person to die is the Pope and the end is the death of a child. The entire work is to be understood as a critique of morals and estates, for example death puts an end to the bribery of the emperor as the highest earthly judge or the worldly pursuit of goods by the cardinal. However, the central message here is that contrary to all the efforts of the living, in the end all status differences will be dissolved.

Holbein's original drafts are just about 5 cm tall, while the motifs in Baldinger's Danse Macabre are enlarged to a comparatively gigantic size and almost completely dissolved by being superimposed with a very coarse grid. In the series Baldinger tries to take away the horror of the inevitable by anticipating the process in the works.

Text: Selin Stütz
 
Christine Mayr | Face and Faceless

7th April to 12th May 2022

Christine Mayr's art is based on her training in sculpture at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna with Wander Bertoni. In the 1980s the artist began to deal with the complexity of growing up, being a child, being a mother and simply being human. Her drawings and sculptures are sensitive, empathetic, courageous, provocative and straight-forward all in one. The figures are united by a special disharmony, in their bodies as well as in their expressions. The physical proportions often do not match, a young body wears an experienced face, genders are not clearly recognizable - but according to Mayr none of this has to be clearly legible. Because it's not about precise attributions, but about general human experiences and feelings.

The focus of the exhibition is the series "Faceblind", in which the artist addresses the topic of face blindness. Mayr tries to depict this special form of perception in her work and to give the viewer an impression of how face-blind people perceive their environment. In this series of works, the artist mostly uses the medium of drawing. The figures are shown from the crown of their heads to the shoulders. They all have one thing in common: their faces are covered or unrecognizable. This happens in different ways - by hands or objects being held in front of the face or the faces are distorted, have no eyes, many mouths etc. This gives each figure a special character and creates a very diverse picture of concealment and anonymization. On the one hand there are girls who hide behind a bouquet of flowers or a drink and make a very playful impression. On the other hand, there are figures without eyes, with mouths wide open, many teeth or blindfolded, which in turn appear vulnerable or even scary.

Mayr's sculptural works are made of ceramic and partially painted or glazed. Despite the hard, rough surface, the figures appear very human, giving the impression that they are interacting and contact with us. So it seems as if the little girl (or boy) is crouching on the ground right in front of us and throwing her arms over her head, or the woman is revealing her bleeding vulva to us with a steady gaze at this moment. This can quickly create a feeling of unease in the viewer. You ask yourself the question: Do I want to devote myself to this being, this character and deal with it? Everyone has to find the answer themselves, but a closer look is definitely worthwhile – only then do the refined details and the extraordinary physicality of the figures come to the fore.

Face and Faceless - the title of the exhibition already puts us in the mood for the artist's works. The visitor meets women, men, girls and boys, some of them have faces, many don't. Shall we give them one? How this encounter takes place is up to us - a fleeting experience or deep confrontation.

 

Text: Selin Stütz 

BENKA | Painted with vulgarity
17 November - 22nd December 2022

The winter exhibition at Galerie Dantendorfer in Vienna is dedicated to the Munich-based artist BENKA. The gallery invites you to the opening of the exhibition Painted with vulgarity on November 17th 2022.

With his art, BENKA wants to encourage viewers to question digitization and the use of smartphones and artificial intelligence in our everyday lives. The artist is interested in the complex interaction between human beings and machines and the associated opportunities as well as dangers.

What effects does digitization have on our everyday lives? And in how many areas of our lives do we dependent on machines without realizing it? These questions concern the artist - symbol of the robotization of our society in BENKA's art is the term CAPTCHA, which forms the title of each painting. A captcha is an automated sequence of numbers and/or letters that is intended to check whether the user is a human or a machine. In his works, too, letters and numbers form the basis, which is completed by an intuitive, raw application of paint.

The exhibition title Painted with Vulgarity is intended to focus on the technique and creation of the works. In the tradition of the abstract expressionists of the 1950s, there are no rules in BENKA's painting, it's not about perfection, but much more about emotion and spontaneity. The paint is applied intuitively with brushes, spray cans, hands or spatulas. He wants to create "a human painting, as opposed to a smooth, perfect, clean painting like a machine might paint". This man-made work should also be visible, seemingly vulgar in the application of paint, but elegant in its overall appearance.

New in the exhibition are the small formats, which are fragments of large canvases. They are the remnants of paintings destroyed by the artist: "It's as if I took out the most beautiful thing, like a surgeon" He cuts the essence - "a piece of emotion", as he calls it - from an unsatisfactory work and elevates it into a self-contained work of art.

Text: Selin Stütz
 
 

 

(Master)pieces

25th February to 25th March 2022

Kurt Hüpfner’s 70 years ongoing oeuvre consists of sculptures, assemblages, collages, paintings, wall hangings, caricatures, graphic reproduction, bundles, text pictures, graphic novels and hundreds of drawings. The main themes in his art are political events, personal memories and encounters as well as his personal studies of authors, artists and text sources. The outcome is a unique world, full of mythical creatures and figures, created using a variety of materials, colours and forms.

Marianne Langs central medium of representation is the drawing – but thinks of the medium in a larger scale by experimenting with different techniques, materials and perspectives. The common topic in the art by Lang is the tension between human beings and nature. The way we think about nature, space and architecture is shaped by the way we think about boundaries. How far do we go to intervene in nature? When comes the point where nature conquers back?

From canvas to paper and sewing work to objects, the artist calls it “working on trial and error”. Many materials are recycled through Petra Lupe and find their way from her surroundings into her work. Working in series is particularly important for Lupe, because only by repeatedly dealing with one topic or material she dives deeper and finds her way forward layer by layer until the right visual language is found.

There is a recurring theme in Peter Baldinger's extensive oeuvre: Dissolution. Whereby he always approaches it from a different point of view, tries to rediscover it through different techniques and engages with it playfully. In his art Baldinger works with everyday motifs and well-known subjects from art history in a very systematic way, asking himself: How much information is necessary to recognize a picture motif? Or reverse: How much can image resolution be lowered without losing the motif?

Since 2019 Christine Mayr has dedicated herself to a new topic – face blindness. She is working to bring this special form of perception to paper, giving the spectator an impression of how individuals with face blindness experience their environment. Mayr draws with coloured pencils on paper, her sculptures are constructed from ceramic and are sometimes coloured and glazed. Most of the time she works intuitively, she doesn’t compose her artworks, but simply lets them grow and emerge.