galerie rauminhalt / Christian Hutzinger "slow2"

In the context of the exhibition series "Unter Vorbehalt" (Under Reservation), gallery rauminhalt_harald bichler presents under the title "slow 2" works from three never before shown work series of the Austrian artist Christian Hutzinger, which date from the years 2018 and 2019 and show well-known motifs in the oeuvre of the artist as well as completely new approaches within his visual language. The works on display focus in particular on Hutzinger's painting and installative work. They prove to be further building blocks of a continuous development in the artist's oeuvre, whose formal language ranges between construction and organic composition as well as abstract form and figuration, with a narrative inherent in the paintings often only revealing itself upon closer examination.

 In a 2018 series consisting of four small-format works, a motif that the artist has been using for years can be found in form of orthogonal, partly dome-shaped rounded planes. This forms are arranged in a vertical position in the lower painting area following a fictitious gravity. Particularly in their serial presentation of being next to each other, these almost figurative appearing panels seem to attract or repel each other, start to sway, slightly tilt to the side and destabilize the precisely painted works in their constructive clarity.(The form of presentation of these four works chosen for the exhibition is to be understood as an - with a wink - reference by the artist to his exhibition "slow", shown almost exactly 20 years ago and on the same street in the Kerstin Engholm Gallery.)

A completely new visual language, however, becomes visible in two series started in 2019, which direct a special focus on the corners of the canvas, from which rounded forms seem to push themselves into the large-format painting surfaces and at the same time evoke negative forms on the background through their intrusion. This works shown in the exhibition, direct the eye in a special way into the depth of the monochrome center of these negative forms, which in turn show formal similarities to Hutzinger's early " cutouts".

While Hutzinger has previously served the canvas, as he himself calls it, as a "container", in these new series the artist increasingly tries to open up the closed cosmos of the canvas in his art, by allowing the forms concentrated at the corners of the picture to expand into the space at the same time. This becomes particularly clear in those works that leave one of the corners of the painting untouched and white, and in this way, provoke in the reception of these works the question of the boundaries between the canvas of the work and the wall of the exhibition space. The artist's understanding of art cannot be captured solely in its pure two-dimensionality. His collages and especially his site-specific works, in which he takes up architectural features of exhibition and show rooms in his wall-paintings and installations on site, demonstrate this. In the context of the exhibition at gallery rauminhalt, Hutzinger will also present a site-specific work on the three marble-clad shop window portals. This specific installation picks up the motif of the dome-like rounded orthogonal forms, as seen in the exhibition in the 4-part small-format series from 2018, in an exactly 10-times enlargement of the motif of the canvas painting. These versions have their own color logic and are therefore to be regarded as referential, but also as independent works.

(Translation of the original German text by Karin Schwarz-Hönig)