A unique series of prototypes and giant toys
A unique series of prototypes and giant toys
The objects give the observer enough space to repeatedly discover new shapes and meanings
The objects give the observer enough space to repeatedly discover new shapes and meanings
The Austrian is one of the most important sculptors of his generation. From the early 1960s onwards, he created a highly idiosyncratic oeuvre defined by a distinctly personal visual language. He succeeded with one new group of works after another in devising for each an unmistakable and surprising voice. The focus of his artistic work was on the human being and the abysses of human life. Gironcoli’s aesthetic of immoderation and opulence, which regularly gave rise to excrescences and curlicues, inspired countless younger artists.
With this incisive exhibition, the SCHIRN is presenting sections from Gironcoli’s later works. The monumental sculptures resemble so many prototypes of a new species, enveloped in shining, seductive surfaces of gold, silver, and copper. Foreign and yet familiar, their organic forms and the set sections in them stem from an everyday culture that is often oriented toward the local: You soon think you can discern a wine barrel, an ear of wheat, or a vine. Then again, Gironcoli stages a strange parade of infants or an imposing ant-like sculpture. His magnificent and unsettling works never fail to impress successive generations of viewers.
Frills and ornaments are decorative patterns used in art and architecture as well as objects. The beginning of Modernism saw a fundamental critique of ornaments which henceforth were hardly ever used
