Galerie Dantendorfer
ALL IN
25 March – 28 May 2021
Exhibition: ALL IN
Artists: Kurt Hüpfner | Christine Mayr | Adrian Uncrut
Period: 25 March – 28 May 2021
Kurt Hüpfner – Kurt Hüpfner’s 70-year-long oeuvre includes sculptures, assemblages, collages, paintings, wall hangings, caricatures, prints, collections, text-based works, as well as numerous drawings and graphic novels. The starting point of his work is always the drawing. Hüpfner engaged early on with écriture automatique, the automatic drawing shaped by the Surrealists – which is not planned but arises spontaneously. This approach is exactly the opposite of what he learned during his training as a commercial graphic designer in Vienna.
The central themes of his art are political events, personal memories and encounters, as well as engagement with various authors, artists, and textual sources. From this, Hüpfner creates a unique world full of fantastical beings and figures, formed from a variety of materials, colors, and shapes. What meaning lies behind it? What happens next? Usually, there is no clear message, but a wide range of interpretive possibilities. The artist himself says he is not interested in the figures or the story itself. The goal is to find the proper arrangement of lines within the space so that the impression of the fleeting arises, as if the moment has already slipped away.
Christine Mayr – Christine Mayr began already in the 1980s to explore the complexity of growing up, childhood, motherhood, and simply being human. Her drawings and sculptures are sensitive, empathetic, courageous, provocative, and direct. The figures share a special disharmony, both in their bodies and their expressions. Physical proportions do not always match, a young body may carry an experienced face, and genders are often ambiguous – yet according to Mayr, clarity is not necessary. It is not about exact assignments, but about universal human experiences and emotions.
Since 2019, she has dedicated herself to a new theme – face blindness. She attempts to convey this particular form of perception onto paper and give viewers an impression of how face-blind people experience their environment.
Mayr draws with colored pencils on paper; her sculptural works are mostly formed from ceramic and sometimes painted or glazed. Her working method is characterized by an intuitive approach – the works are rarely composed but arise organically.
Adrian Uncrut – Adrian Uncrut’s work is shaped by his training in sculpture and restoration at the National University of Arts in Bucharest. The themes that concern him are personal, everyday, and above all human. His works are sensitive, witty, and humorous. Uncrut develops a personal mythology in which he assumes the position of narrator while simultaneously remaining inside and outside the story. In this way, he maintains both connection and distance to the works. He gives viewers the opportunity to gain insight into his inner world while allowing each person to interpret the work individually.
Striking in Uncrut’s oeuvre is his extraordinary handling of materials in both sculpture and drawing. He mixes bronze, brass, iron, stainless steel, wood, rubber, plaster, and often recycled found objects into unique works. In his drawings, he uses charcoal, watercolor, tape, various papers, and even coffee, creating a singular and individual visual language. It almost seems as if the works are not two-dimensional but thin reliefs.
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