The Austrian Bruno Gironcoli (1936-2010) is one of the most important sculptors of his generation. In a personally coloured, individual pictorial language, he created from the early 1960s onwards, in a seemingly never-ending inventive insatiability, a visionary, singular Œuvre. With ever new groups of works, he succeeded in finding a distinctive, surprising language. One after the other, he created wire sculptures, hollow forms, polyester objects and irritating environments. The human being with his abysses was at the centre of Gironcoli's artistic work. He shared existential questions and a thoroughly politically motivated avant-garde thought with his colleagues of the Viennese scene. Gironcoli's aesthetic of excess and opulence, which was constantly proliferating, inspired countless younger artists. In 1977, the eccentric Gironcoli took over as director of the sculpture school at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. Made possible by the now spacious studio situation, he created room-filling, often space-blasting sculptures for the first time.
In a haunting exhibition, the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt presents excerpts from Gironcoli's monumental late work. As if they had sprung from a theatre of the absurd or a surreal dream world, the gigantic objects appear like prototypes of a new species, immersed in shiny, seductive surfaces of gold, silver and copper. Strange and yet familiar, their organic forms and the set pieces of an everyday culture that is often oriented towards the local: Soon one thinks one recognizes a wine barrel, an ear of corn, a vine. Then again, Gironcoli stages a strange parade of infants or an imposing ant-like sculpture. His grandiose and irritating works always surprise as postmodern pastiches.
Opening Hours:
Tuesday, Friday through Sunday: 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Wednesday and Thursday: 10 am to 10 pm
Text source and further information about this event: https://www.schirn.de/fileadmin/SCHIRN/Presse/Texte_deutsch_2019/Schirn_Presse_Gironcoli_dt.pdf
