Austrian culture center: Hans Kupelwieser, Postmedial Sculptures

Contemporary sculpture in a broader field (Rosalind Krauss) is characterized by the transcending of borders in both operational and material areas. Hans Kupelwieser (b. 1948) has worked in the latter area at the College of Apllied Arts in Vienna. He includes new materials, not only within the field of experimentation, as in arte povera, but with an almost linguistic expression that brings new meaning to the materials. A flat rubber or solid steel sculpture provides a screen upon which letters are punched as blank characters, displaying quotations of well-known philosophers, thereby conveying a new function.

This combination of the extended use of materials and operation between form and function is the field of analysis in which Hans Kupelwieser moves. The materials he uses, such as aluminium, occasionally lead to reflection of historical perspectives (see Andy Warhol to Walter Pichler), as seen in the perforated sculptures displayed at the notable “New Ways of Displaying Plastic” exhibition in 1982, at Neue Galerie, Graz, or in his current pneumatic sculptures, one of them now being permanently located in the Austrian Sculpture Park near Graz.

In this way, Hans Krupelwieser succeeds in creating a third independent position between Erwin Wurm and Franz West in contemporary Austrian sculpture, which makes a clean break from the period of abstraction and represents a substantial further development in post-modern sculptural concepts.

Jungmannovo sqare 18, Prague 1, Mo-Fr 10-17. the exhibition lasts until 30th November 2007