rauminhalt_harald bichler
space & content

Hans Kupelwieser is one of the most important Austrian concept and media artists of his generation. Born in 1948 in Lunz am See, Lower Austria, after finishing the graphic-arts school he graduated from the University of Applied Arts in Vienna with Herbert Tasquil, Bazon Brock and Peter Weibel. Owing to his multi-faceted training history, he displays a diverse and clearly identifiable language of form and material. Kupelwieser‘s work reads like a symptomatic feature at the interface of flat and spatial forms, between a thoroughly methodical merging and juxtaposition of photography and sculpture – an interplay between artistic thinking and perspective – that addresses surface, object and function. 

With his solo presentation in the Rauminhalt gallery, Hans Kupelwieser now offers a representative insight into a sculptural œuvre that oscillates between the autonomous and the usable work of art and shows both a conceptual and creative extension of concepts of origin and sculpture. Kupelwieser’s furniture sculptures present his design principles based on formal reduction and restrained elegance quite literally and in haptic comprehensibility. In addition to the furniture sculptures exhibited in the gallery, Hans Kupelwieser is expanding the exhibition at the Georg Kargl PERMANENT with an installation that subtly emphasises his extensive range of applications, transformations and interpretations.

The exhibition focuses on his sculptural work, which presents a broad spectrum of older works and works produced especially for the showing.

Sabine Kienzer