21.05.-22.08.2021. The exhibition at Neue Galerie Graz takes a look at the central questions of the sculptor Josef Pillhofer.
The sculptor Josef Pillhofer would have turned 100 next year. His work is extremely diverse and from the very beginning has been concerned with three-dimensionality as the central question of sculpture. How does a spatial manifestation emerge from the two-dimensionality of the image? Questions of image science intrude at that moment. How does an image come into being? The visible world becomes an image (landscape drawings), the block-like object is reduced to a surface (collage), the surface folds up again to form a body (foldings).
Pillhofer is very close to the tradition of modernism, he formulates extremely precisely in this regard, which is probably concentrated on his training in Paris in the 1950s. It is true that sculpture in his work is predominantly based on the human figure, is also mostly made of the classical materials of stone or bronze, and is often pedestal-bound. However, Pillhofer also often breaks these regularities and thus achieves an expansion of sculptural constants. His questions extend into neighboring fields such as drawing, collage, and further to movement, when he develops sculptures with which to act on stage.
This exhibition is not a representative survey show, it is rather the single view on some central questions, which Pillhofer has formulated most amazingly.
Josef Pillhofer
21.05.-22.08.2021
Neue Galerie Graz, Kabinett
Joanneumsviertel, 8010 Graz
www.museum-joanneum.at/neue-galerie-graz
