Roland Kollnitz
Galerie Grita Insam, Vienna, Austria
Roland Kollnitz, exhibition view (2010)
Walking into Roland Kollnitz’ current show feels a bit like cutting someone off mid-sentence. Assembled from found industrial objects – concrete balls, steel rods and discs of wood – his sculptures are posed tentatively, as if silently gesturing to one another and the surrounding walls. A few works rest solidly on the ground, others perch gingerly on one foot (or three). Some reach to the ceiling while the rest squat. Their underlying but indecipherable choreography gives them a sentient quality, suggesting that they, too, will soon be on the move.
Left: Kugelstück (2007); right: Wandstück (2008)
As in his previous installations, Kollnitz incorporates the built space by manipulating the lighting. Here, he has installed a fluorescent tube that circumscribes the ceiling, but leaves a generous edge so that the room’s corners are fully and unusually lit. The effect shrinks the space, lowering the ceiling and magnifying the colours of the sculptures – untreated wood and steel finished in black or chartreuse – so that they pop. But despite the shadow-free, lab-like conditions, one gets the distinct impression that though everything may be visible, very little is perceived or understood.
Skulptur (2009)
The sculptures themselves are mostly compact, both in material and form. Solid, but occupying little volume, they don’t look like anything much at first, especially not art (other than the fragile Minimal or Conceptual kind). Taken together, their assembly alludes to almost familiar gestures derived from bodily positions or movements, including leaning, twisting or handstands. One work recalls to mind a single ski.
Exhibition view
While single elements in the sculptures are precisely calculated and assembled – angles, orthogonal and otherwise, are deliberately set, edges and corners carefully aligned – the works also have a slightly jarring, less-than-perfect quality. One sculpture balances on a tripod with varying vertices. Plinths, underneath and overhead, are mounted just off-centre. A dangling half-moon breaks its planar base of stacked bars. With a slight nudge here or there, one thinks, these pieces could be easily congruent.
Instead, Kollnitz achieves an uneasy and finely calibrated balance, a precarious and brittle silence. If say, a gust of wind suddenly swept through the room as you entered, it would unleash a jangling of metal colliding with concrete, rolling thuds and the snapping of torqued steel. Better to shut the door.
Helen Chang
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