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Roland Kollnitz | | |
Roland Kollnitz
3rd
Roland Kollnitz's works are descriptions or seismographs of the artist's perception of the world, his reactions to experiences and situations he has been confronted with. And his observation of the world is particularly subtle, registering the finest details. His artistic creations, often executed in the form of interventions and installations that respond concretely to particular places and situations, are just as fine and their details just as precise.
The starting point of Kollnitz's works is always the awareness of spatial and material features, this then linked to other levels of experience. Here, a major role is played by his singular sensitivity to materials and his extensive knowledge of their various properties and fine characteristics. The appropriate choice of materials and, accordingly, their proper use are central aspects of his artistic approach. In this regard he speaks of "material ethics", thus making clear that ultimately he considers the material as standing broadly for the material aspects of the world we find ourselves confronted with, the world in which we have to orient ourselves and react. The same is valid for the physical laws determining this world, which Kollnitz also deals with and makes a theme in his works.
This is tied quite gracefully to the levels of human experience beyond the material. Kollnitz's observations of materials and objects are, as a rule, connected to situational experiences. Although these are not literally portrayed in his works, they nevertheless flow into the works in various ways, offering the observer a basis for subjective experiences and chains of association. In addition, the recipients' reactions are stirred at the verbal level by the works' titles. Kollnitz's titles are both poetic and witty word plays.
For example, one of the pieces made for this exhibit is called "Lümmel" (boor, slouch). The installation is made completely of pre-fabricated building elements. It consists of yellow concrete formwork plates that are laid on the cross pieces of three blue metal frames. As in many of Kollnitz's sculptures, a very precise but unstable balance is achieved: the entire weight of the plates rests on parts of the frames that are of constructive importance, but which were not actually designed to have a supporting function. The upper surfaces normally used as the supporting face are thus in an unstable equilibrium. The recipient can feel this physically when he/she uses the "Lümmel" as a bench in order to watch the video placed opposite, or just to slouch around at the exhibit. The video also has to do with an unstable balance. It is called "Polnisches Wunder" (Polish miracle) and was made during the return train ride from his trip to Poland this past summer. A lapidary detail is singled out and repeated in a loop, a detail the artist noticed because it illustrated how gravity influences the behaviour of a material and its resulting form: the bending of the triangular-folded paper napkins in a napkin-holder in the dining car. Kollnitz contrasts their movements and the resulting forms to a diagonal white space that covers the left half of the video screen.
The piece in the centre room of the gallery is called "Zentrales Stück" (central piece). It is based on a personal experience of the artist. The stem of a glass that he found exceptionally beautiful, its design from the 19th century, the material and function in harmony with its successful aesthetic form, broke in two during a heated discussion with an artist colleague. Kollnitz found it a shame to throw it away, as the above-mentioned ideal properties of the object were manifested even in its broken state. His combination of the two parts - now non-functional - again gives rise to a "good" three-dimensional form. This form is placed onto a small table-like pedestal, opposite another "good form" that he found - an empty toilet paper roll, which also unifies material and function with perfect aesthetic form. Placed under this ensemble is a piece of cloth that suggests a carpet. It has been left by the artist as though simply dropped, since it would otherwise certainly have become threadbare in the gallery. In a different setting (a private home) it could be spread out or exchanged for a carpet - as seen in the photo on the invitation. A delicately framed print of that photo, including its colour scale - in the eye of the artist also a fine form - is hung on the wall as a sort of silly joke. Complementing the exhibit's larger installation and situational pieces are other three-dimensional works that allow one to experience elementary physical properties in a similarly refined and precise manner. Again, most of them are based on conditions of unstable equilibrium and tension, such as the finely balanced rods that have nearly become a trademark of the artist. A large rode with a bent end (Kollnitz-Skulptur #1) is in the courtyard, another sticks out like a flag rode into the Bäckerstrasse from the corner of the balcony (Olá [port.: Hallo]). The piece entitled Sushitela/Sushitella, already shown in Graz, consists of a rode standing from a round plate on the floor - something like a pedestal - with a sheet of glass on its upper end. It offers the person standing beneath it a roof-like shelter - a spot to pause is created in the smallest space. In "Spektakel" (Spectacle), a bamboo pole leans on the wall from a "fallen" base; balanced at its upper end is a strip of metal, its shape that which results when a piece of rolled metal springs open.
Almost all art being created today has its roots in the 1960s, a decisive decade during which the term art and the field of art itself was expanded in such a radical and multifaceted manner. Kollnitz's understanding of art, in which, among other things, the material and its properties directly become the contents of the works themselves, is also based on possibilities that were opened at that time. However, while artists like Richard Serra, Bruce Naumann, Joseph Beuys or the protagonists of the Arte Povera ascribed a universally valid import to the statements made by their artistic creations, in time imparting a heroic character to them, Kollnitz's manner of approach is full of lightness and non-pretentiousness. From the beginning he has considered it a subjective approach that doesn't even attempt to convey fundamental, existential experiences or to make irrefutable proclamations. Kollnitz belongs to the generation of artists who have long and without question acted with the awareness that the world can only be viewed and experienced subjectively. He is characterized by a sensuous perception of the finest details, which he responds to with playful poetry, sophistication, irony and humour.
Eva Badura-Triska, Vienna, September 2006 |
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