July 6, 2022
A small but extremely fine and compact exhibition in the Linz Castle Museum is showing the ingenious works of Rudi Stanzel (born 1958) in Linz until October 9, 2022. With his own “vocabulary” he knows how to irritate, alienate, condense and to abstract.
“DIS” — a prefix that refers to opposites — is the name of the show for which the artist designed a room in the palace as an overall installation with works from the last ten years (curated by Inga Kleinknecht).
For Stanzel, the focus is always on the intensive, almost scientific examination and experimentation with the material, which he extracts from the usual use. Works with graphite and thus black dominate in the palace.
Chain curtains that redefine space
Upon entering, “curtains” made of aluminum chains catch the eye. The mobile “chain installation” divides the space and redefines visual axes. “The chains come from Spain, where they are used instead of doors in the summer, letting air through and repelling flies,” says Stanzel. For the first time he showed the “anti-fly chains” in a Viennese flak tower.
From a few meters away, the pictures and sculptures that seem heavy and metallic turn out to be clever “deceptions”, “DIS paintings” that reveal the unique paths that the artist, who lives and works in Vienna, takes. For these collages and montages, Stanzel spreads graphite — the stuff pencils are made of — onto styrofoam and/or wood, creating several layers whose structures are constantly penetrating, the sections almost seem like oil paintings. Stanzel does not paint and yet, as he says himself, he creates “the densest drawing there is”. Graphite gives him so much as a material because every unevenness is reflected by the light, according to the busy artist, who also deals with writing, pantomime or theater and studied media design with Peter Weibel.
Again and again, Stanzel deals with chemical formulas. The crystalline structure of mica – iron oxide, which is used against rust and has the same formula as the drawing material sanguine – gives pictures a very special shine, for which the artist also allows color. The technology is ingeniously enhanced in “hologram glitter” images. Reflecting dots of color, “clouds of color”, change the picture with the changing perspective of the viewer and different incidences of light. This is of course difficult to capture in photographs. He calls it “The image that doesn’t exist,” says Stanzel. Like floating through the vastness of the universe…
By Melanie Wagenhofer