Untitled Manfred Wakolbinger

Manfred Wakolbinger produced his first sculptures in glass and copper in the early 1990s. The regular glass case and the rather organically shaped copper plate placed inside it conjure up such primary opposites as internal and external space, hot and cold, transparent and opaque, intellectual and emotional, and open and closed. Unlike the glass sheets, with their neutral, industrial geometry, the copper surfaces of his sculptures bear the imprint of metal being worked by hand. The directness in this, together with the patination of the copper, which is gradually becoming increasingly visible, evokes associations with changes in the human body and skin, thus adding the dimension of time to the work’s field of interpretation. The sensory aspect of the copper is further augmented by the light and reflections permeating the glass sheets, which makes the viewer an active part of the sculpture, as it “expands” its own space. The space occupied by the glass case demarcates the “negative horizon”, a term that the artist borrows from the French philosopher Paul Virilio: the “shape” of the air between the object and the viewer, which, as the negative extension of the work, is a constructive factor of equal rank. With the complex interpretation of space in his meditatively toned works, Wakolbinger thematises with extraordinary sensitivity and purity the most basic question at the heart of the genre of sculpture.

Dominika Sodics