Helmut Hinterseer Was ist die welt

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• Text by Johannes Lauer (EN)

  Helmut Hinterseer - Was ist die Welt

  29 September - 06 November 2016

  Its rise and decay – the fact that the world is a work-in-progress – is fascinating.
  The world is condition process and change all at the same time; without beginning, without end, and it provides room to move. With the fascination of a carefree child who still knows nothing of barbarism, debasement or civilization's achievements, this artist works himself through the world by trying to comprehend it. As it is, not as it was intended to be. The way there is itself fulfillment already. It is a natural-philosophical undertaking of discovery and a search for clues; a becoming acquainted, an assessment, an approach.

  The Inner and the Outer encounter each other through action - the feat is to translate the primal into something of one's own, or to make something of one's own primal.
  Who - and what - is hidden beneath the thin layer of language and culture?
  It is not as much about art "against" as it is art "instead of." In this world, the proposition of opening spaces through opposites and of guiding our perception attracts us.

  The simplicity of the wasteland and the silence of the "remote location" – places of commonality – invite the artist to combine things and to write them out poetically.
  The inner strength of the artist's notebooks, his everyday living companions, drive the story of their own development forward. These primal writings, vessels for the essence of the entire oeuvre, come to an end after multiple, ever-finer processes of filtration and distillation.

  And the spirits/ end product thereof? A drawing? A picture? An idea? A text? A sculpture? Ever-finer materials emerge, ever-brighter dimensions open up, and: the more elusive the distillate, the more significant the result. The notebooks in the exhibition No. 14 to No. 21 are in the final stages of their development: fully refined, closed and sealed in graphite.

  Everything starts with drawing; it is direct and insubstantial; it is the study of nature, the capturing of things. Drawing is also the practical attempt to believe in the reality behind the bright shadows – no matter how slowly or overly quickly, violently or inconspicuously, naturally and inexorably it may occur. "A mountain is a perfect sculpture," says the artist, created by nature in its perfection and the forces of the universe. A mountain is supposedly geological history come to a standstill; the artist is fascinated by the grandeur of the ancient rock, its sheer steadfastness and yet: transience.

  The concrete sculptures, a selection of "giwihti" (Old High German for "weights")
  and blocks are grown rather than formed, it is the Outer within the Inner and vice versa.
  From the small format to the up to four-ton monoliths, they are radical reductions, congealed feelings, reflections, preliminary states.
  To create absurd instruments, that is, to bend and tie lilac bushes to follow their biological conditions in such a way as to establish contours by contrast, to generate areas of tension, like Cézanne to make "Art (which) is a harmony parallel to nature," is to get to know their inherent powers. When is too much, and where does it lead?
  Playful adjustments, sounding boards, miniature worlds, and playground equipment all arise as results of trial and error. Art is often insubstantial here and a failure to see what one knows.
  It is rather an invitation to look, to feel, to be amazed, to touch and to ponder: What is to come? What is?

  Text by Johannes Lauer

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