Illumination of ideas

Salzburg-born sculptor Alfred Haberpointner creates wooden sculptures that oscillate between an abstract, geometric form and a figurative image. With his work series spanning over the last two decades, Haberpointner proves how he has innovatively dealt with wooden materials and freed himself from the roots of craft-based, naturalistic wooden sculpture. In his "chopped images," he gives the wooden material an intense presence through systematic, rhythmic sections, which emerge through close observation and exploration of the textured surfaces and result in a dance between light and shadow. He is concerned with form in his works, particularly in the treatment of wood in all possible nuances and shadings. In each of his artworks, one can see the traces of the work process: Haberpointner subjects his reliefs and sculptures to a powerful, mechanical work process that leaves traces on the works. Through beating, chopping, and burning, textures emerge that give the works a relief-like surface, which lacks any mathematical precision and exudes a special aura. Alfred Haberpointner is represented in major art collections, such as the Würth Collection.

Constantin Schroeder's figurative paintings are impressive, moving images with a profound sense of depth. His pictorial protagonists are fascinating characters that never let us go. Internalizing the present with all its complexities, he uses a very reduced color palette. Mostly executed in large formats, the scenes captivate the viewer with their characteristic narratives. Schroeder reaches deep into the archive of the human psyche. His works reveal an enigmatic iconography, which includes young heroes posing interpersonal mysteries. The artist, who lives and works in Berlin and studied theology, philosophy, and art history, also illuminates the darker sides of life in an extraordinary, hyper-realistic style. These are powerful images that captivate us with their enigmatic pictorial content. Schroeder leaves some parts of the image white, which allows the viewer to develop his or her own interpretation and understanding of the image through open associations.

Based on an expanded concept of the image, the light-space-movement and time in the network of relationships between art and everyday life are the fundamental aspects of Gunda Förster's artistic work. Her space-related works can be understood as painting with contemporary methods or places of body and space perception that play with spatial reflection, but also social and perceptual-psychological conditions from the most diverse creative means. An important element of her work is defining and breaking boundaries - the architecture of space, of the image, the boundary between art and everyday life, between art, architecture, design and advertising, practical and theoretical debate, product and process, private and public, and reality and appearance. The formal reduction of her works determines their symbolic quality. The significance is only revealed by linking the most diverse aspects and their meanings. Essentially, Gunda Förster’s works focus on the correspondence between light, space, movement, and time as aspects that are constantly present in everyday life as well as in art.