Untitled
Herwig Kempinger
C-print on Alucore; edition 1/3
204 × 129 cm (framed)
2004
Acquisition 2005
Inv. No. 0147
Herwig Kempinger’s photographic works tell no stories. They negotiate the medium through which they have come into existence, leading it back to its technical origins without revealing their real motive.
Herwig Kempinger depicts concrete objects in a way that makes it difficult to categorise what is seen or, alternatively, he offers it new each time. Perception oscillates between real object and abstraction. One gets involved with one form and thus penetrates a new space.
The motifs presented – the artist calls them “temporary volumes” – really do only exist for a (short) period of time and offer a number of ways of being perceived. The photographic fixing of a non-tangible moment leads to a “toppling picture” in the viewer’s mind, calling up existential questions as well as some related to reality and transition. For the viewer, the reversibility of the moment appears as a considerable challenge to individual perception.
Heike Maier, 2005 (translation: Tim Sharp)
Continue readingExhibitions
Wallpaper #1, evn sammlung, Maria Enzersdorf, 2018
evn collection / institutional presentation, Viennafair, Vienna, 2011
Herwig Kempinger. Digital Sky and Flat Space, LENTOS Kunstmuseum Linz, Linz, 2007
Nach Rokytník. The collection of EVN, MUMOK, Vienna, 2005
Publications
Herwig Kempinger. Digital Sky and Flat Space, , p. 34, 37
Georg Kargl: Fine arts since 1998, BOX since 2005, Cologne 2006, p. 73
evn sammlung 95–05, Cologne 2005, p. 176