You have to Look up to get Grounded
Nothing to Hide
Tongues
Placements
Stargazer
Circulations
Galaxies
Forces
Travellers
Schweben
Glas Kupfer
Innen und Aussen
Sockel
Der Anfang
Intotheblack 01 + 02
Intotheblack 02
Intotheblack 01
InsideOut – The Coronet Theatre London
Galaxies 08
Galaxies 07
Galaxies 06
Galaxies 05
Loop Galaxies 1-4
Inhale-Exhale
Mirihi
Galaxy 0
Körpergehäuse/Animated Body
Desert Flights
Galapagos
GC/ESP
Alienated, Kaja Clara Joo, Hans Kupelwieser, Rita Nowak, Manfred Wakolbinger, 2023
Design Days – Kunst im Park, Grafenegg
KOMBI, Manfred Wakolbinger & Leopold Kogler, Kunstverein Mistelbach
look & listen, L.art GALERIE, Salzburg
PARALLEL im Park, Toscanapark, Gmunden
Heimische Perlengeheimnisse/Vitrineninstallation – Kefermarkt, Perg
Mosbacher/Wakolbinger/Ehrlich-Speiser – L.art GALERIE Salzburg
Menage – Kunstraumarcade, Mödling
Open Air – Schlossmuseum OÖ, Linz/Donau
Tongues – Smolka Contemporary, Wien
stop-over – Kunsthaus Mürz, Mürzzuschlag
Einzelpräsentation- Smolka Contemporary, Wien
Inhale – Exhale – Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig
Kunstparcour Millstatt – Floss im Millstätter See und Villa am Kap
Kontinuität und Brüche – Museum Liaunig, Neuhaus
verbindet – pulsiert – ermöglicht – Galerie Forum, Wels
Blickachsen 11 – Skulpturen in Bad Homburg und Frankfurt RheinMain
Andere Welten – Eva Schlegel und Manfred Wakolbinger – Grenzkunst-Halle, Jennersdorf
Wasteland – Galerie Artemons Contemporary, Hellmonsödt
Vienna for Art’s Sake! – Winterpalais des Belvederes, Wien
4muerz2beat – Kunsthaus Mürz, Mürzzuschlag
Placements + Galaxies – Kunsthaus Saalfelden
Up from the Skies – ZEIT KUNST Niederösterreich, Krems
Franz Graf, Eva Schlegel, Manfred Wakolbinger – Galerie Fotohof
Austria Davaj! Der Gipfel des kreativen Österreichs – Schusev State Museum, Moskau
Verbeugung – Kirche St. Wolfgang
Einzelpräsentation – Stadtgalerie Klagenfurt
Einzelpräsentation – Hipphalle, Gmunden
Strömung – Museum Kuppersmühle Duisburg
Sputnik – 20er Haus & Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Wien
La Coesistenza dell’ Arte – Biennale di Venezia
Einzelpräsentation – Galerie Gritta Insam, Wien
Einzelpräsentation – Museum Moderner Kunst, Palais Liechtenstein, Wien
Einzelpräsentation – Galerie Gritta Insam, Wien
documenta8, Kassel
Jump2020 – Wien
M – Münchendorf
Landing – Graz
art_box Museumsquartier
Stampede – Neuhaus/Museum Liaunig
Circulations – Wien
Giardini – Graz
Voyage – Neunkirchen
Chat – Wien
Cloud – Wiener Neustadt
Connection – Salzburg
Bench and Gate – St. Pölten
Lightning – Wien
Rendez-Vous – Leobersdorf
Receiver – St. Pölten
Transformator – Linz
Ohne Titel – Perg
Ohne Titel – Krems Stein
Ohne Titel – Wien
Ohne Titel – Wien
Ohne Titel Linz
Die Eroberung – Wien
Ohne Titel
Three Staele with Different Head Parts
Unterwasser Buecher
Loos Trinkglas
Bücher Coverfotos
Kirchenglocken in Perg
Minioper Inside Out
Schausammlung Museum für angewandte Kunst (MAK), Wien
The Beauty of Darkness
I saw a spiral galaxy in the constellation of Coma Berenices, an unremarkable part of the sky that had been named after a pharaoh’s wife by the Greek astronomer Conon of Samos in the third century BCE. Berenice had sworn to sacrifice her shimmering golden hair if her husband came back unscathed from his war against the Assyrians. The pharaoh returned triumphant, and Berenice laid her severed skeins of hair at the feet of a statue of the goddess of love. When her offering disappeared overnight, the Greek court astronomer showed the furious pharaoh, who believed the hair had been stolen, three stars in the following night’s sky and said that the goddess Aphrodite had turned his queen’s offering of golden hair into those stars.
Peter LiaunigRede Menage
Manfred Wakolbinger's gaze since his childhood has been directed outward and upward. He was fascinated by the first satellite Sputnik and wanted and still wants to know how far the human influence reaches. Manfred is first and foremost a self-educated sculptor. He gained his first experience in tool machining and tool making and even though he evolved his artistic ideas and sculptures in the 1980ies, he never resigned from the technical component. His entities are precisely constructed, are built. Thus he is a sculptor who creates his sculptures from his favorite material. In the beginning, they were monolithic sculptures that were almost hermetically sealed with their rough, concrete-like surface.
Jasper SharpTalk with Manfred Wakolbinger
J Perhaps we should talk about the title “Inhale Exhale”. M Breathing – something truly essential … J … for all of us … M … Yes, nothing happens without it. Sometimes when I’m on a diving expedition, I find myself watching the air bubbles from people’s breathing as they head up towards the surface. It’s interesting when our breathing takes on a visible shape since the whole thing happens under pressure, deep down. And as the bubbles rise, the pressure decreases and they expand, they change shape, then burst and suddenly become something completely new. The air is in water, an element that’s attracted by similar molecules. This attraction creates very impressive changes and transformations. ( Nr. 1 ) But as soon as this has happened, the shape disperses and is gone. This disappearance and dispersal is about life and death.
Manfred WakolbingerUnder the Surface
When David Cameron uses his experiences from the deep sea dives to the wreck of Titanic to inform the fantastic images of another world in AVATAR, he employs a commonly used device: Images and beings from the underwater world are transmitted through the eye into our inner self and transform into a distant intergalactic world. Our desire for knowledge about deep remote space is at once satisfied and stimulated with images of landscapes and creatures from a world the water’s surface separates from us.
August RuhsAs if it fell to Earth
Particularly in his more recent works, in which peopled and unpeopled landscapes, photography and sculpture are inextricably linked and interwoven, Manfred Wakolbinger touches upon the tireless question of the essence and appearance of categorical givens, which in the subject area at hand refer above all to the concepts of reality and fiction, illusion and reality, image and language, thing and object. For on closer inspection the matter-of-course way the images present the assemblage of their heterogeneous elements as a homogenous whole here is revealed as illusory; a game of intended deception and montage.
Brigitte HuckUp from the Skies
Universalism and spirituality were already exorcised from the Dominican Church in Krems by Josef II in 1786: since its secularization, the gothic hall has been used as a meeting place for state parliaments, as a warehouse and factory, then as a theater and cinema. The newly founded Landesgalerie für zeitgenössische Kunst is now responsible for a promising exhibition program in the spectacular rooms.
Alexandra SchantlTalk with Manfred Wakolbinger
AS: Given that the exhibition currently being held in the context of ZEIT KUNST NIEDER.STERREICH offers an insight into the last three decades of your artistic work, I would first be interested to know what made you want to become an artist. Was there a particular moment in your life when you said, yes, that’s it, that’s what I want to do?
Peter NoeverBelow Point Zero of Art
Is it a bottom view that Manfred Wakolbinger draws his creative power from? Or perhaps just a bottom memory? Indeed, his previous work already comprises a number of motifs that might be read and reappraised as reflecting subaquatic impressions, notably so against the background of his most recent underwater photography. These motifs include not only the subject of containment that keeps reappearing in endless variations, but also the dream of an infinite volume, of the mutual permeation of form and content.
David EspinosaSeven–Tenths Inspiration, Three–Tenths Fascination
Seven-tenths of the Earth’s surface is covered in water. It’s a hum-bling thought, even more staggering when you consider scientists estimate we have only scratched the surface of exploring our planet’s lakes and rivers, oceans and seas. But while it’s true we know so little, we already know so much. I know this may sound confusing, but bear in mind that hundreds of thousands of scuba divers are certified each year because we do know the underwater world is something entirely special.
Elisabeth SchlebrüggeClose to the Surface
Is it ever possible to have enough of the sea? Saturated, the reservoir of a summer which has to last a whole year. Days spent on stones, encrusted with salt, night-time imagery seen with closed eyes, the sea, which pushes its way into narrow cracks and channels. Sea tomatoes, compact ball form, firey red or a bouquet of flames unfolding, balunids, hidden crabs, rock shells wandering over the grown-over rocks, “crab on a rock,” you cried in your sleep.
Rainer FuchsEmbodiments of space
The body of the sculpture, broken up or opened, with its center laid bare and accentuated as an open and hollow interior plays a central role in Wakolbinger’s œuvre. Thus, he undermines the notion that sculpture is about compact and static volumes while taking into account that it is bound to space. His concrete sculptures of the eighties, with inset elements of copper sheet, offered hidden beauty and preciousness. Their shell structures i.a. pointed to the act of enveloping space and to space being enveloped as a theme of sculpture.
Lóránd HegyiSculpture as an objectification of relationality
The strategies intrinsic to form as expressed in the sculptural shapes of Manfred Wakolbinger’s œuvre are determined by the dialectic theme of how physically material and sensorily empirical processes of perception can be relativized or seen as something absolute. Seeing material, empirical moments as absolute does not only denote an immediate, bodily and haptic encounter, a quasi-“corporeal” relation with the sculptural phenomenon but also an inexorable confrontation with the highly sensual connotations, sometimes even bordering on the sexual, which evolve through the strong presence of the material properties of the shapes.
Hans-Werner SchmidtWakolbinger’s Art Figures
In the Sunshine is the title of one of Manfred Wakolbinger’s sculptures from 1984. It is an ensemble of presented and pœresenting elements: an interplay of free forms vaguely reminiscent of human figures and a supporting construction which also articulates itself as a carrier of meaning. Two copper elements combine to form a figure. An angular piece which supports a cogwheel-like shape, and a semicircle above a long flat element give rise to the image of a reclining figure in a relaxed pose.
Brigitte HuckSputniks, UFOs and other extraterrestrials
During the night of October 4, 1957, a radio report reminiscent of Orson Welles’s exploits announced that Sputnik would pass over Austria. The entire population of Mitterkirchen, a small place in Upper Austria, was out and about, scanning the sky for the spaceship in orbit. Nobody actually caught a glimpse of it, but the collective fascination with the mystery of technology was a rite of passage for Manfred Wakolbinger, five years old then.
Peter SloterdijkPoetics of Detachment
Ladies and Gentlemen. Were we to be on the banks of the Ganges my task here today would probably be easier. I would then not need to offer an involved explanation of a philosophical concept of existence, would not have to endeavor to set out a phenomenological description of our being-in-the-world, I would not have to elaborate on how the Latin word existence reflects the Greek word ecstasy, I would not need to make many remarks on the foundation of the ecstatic in the everyday and of the everyday in the ecstatic, and I would also not need to always speak so unnaturally clearly to ensure the recording experts from Indian TV were kept happy.
Stuart MorganThe limits of selfhood
Inside a white gallery the visitor moves and stops, approaches, withdraws and circles. The forms on display encourage physical encounter, but this is discouraged again by materials – that blank, substantial concrete and, in a different way, by the slivers of sheet metal it surrounds. The move from concrete to copper, cool to warm, marks a shift from body language to sheer optical sensation. As the bipartite structure plays or the relation between whole and part, tensions are established between what can be grasped and how literally metaphors of touch may be construed.
Out of the Blue
Alienated, Kaja Clara Joo, Hans Kupelwieser, Rita Nowak, Manfred Wakolbinger, 2023
You have to Look up to get Grounded
Design Days – Kunst im Park, Grafenegg
Intotheblack 01 + 02
Intotheblack 02
Intotheblack 01
KOMBI, Manfred Wakolbinger & Leopold Kogler, Kunstverein Mistelbach
look & listen, L.art GALERIE, Salzburg
PARALLEL im Park, Toscanapark, Gmunden
Connection – Salzburg
Heimische Perlengeheimnisse/Vitrineninstallation – Kefermarkt, Perg
Fly High
Mosbacher/Wakolbinger/Ehrlich-Speiser – L.art GALERIE Salzburg
Christoph Ransmayr
The Beauty of Darkness
Peter Liaunig
Rede Menage
Text
Into the Black
Unterwasser Buecher
Loos Trinkglas
Bücher Coverfotos
Unterwasser
Kirchenglocken in Perg
Menage – Kunstraumarcade, Mödling
InsideOut – The Coronet Theatre London
Jump2020 – Wien
Open Air – Schlossmuseum OÖ, Linz/Donau
Jasper Sharp
Talk with Manfred Wakolbinger
Talk
M – Münchendorf
Landing – Graz
Tongues – Smolka Contemporary, Wien
stop-over – Kunsthaus Mürz, Mürzzuschlag
Einzelpräsentation- Smolka Contemporary, Wien
Inhale – Exhale – Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig
Nothing to Hide
Die Eroberung – Wien
Kunstparcour Millstatt – Floss im Millstätter See und Villa am Kap
Galaxies 08
Galaxies 07
Tongues
Placements
Stargazer
Reversals
Galaxies 06
Galaxies 05
Loop Galaxies 1-4
Kontinuität und Brüche – Museum Liaunig, Neuhaus
verbindet – pulsiert – ermöglicht – Galerie Forum, Wels
Blickachsen 11 – Skulpturen in Bad Homburg und Frankfurt RheinMain
Andere Welten – Eva Schlegel und Manfred Wakolbinger – Grenzkunst-Halle, Jennersdorf
Inhale-Exhale
art_box Museumsquartier
Stampede – Neuhaus/Museum Liaunig
Circulations – Wien
Wasteland – Galerie Artemons Contemporary, Hellmonsödt
Circulations
Giardini – Graz
Voyage – Neunkirchen
Chat – Wien
Vienna for Art’s Sake! – Winterpalais des Belvederes, Wien
Galaxies
Cloud – Wiener Neustadt
4muerz2beat – Kunsthaus Mürz, Mürzzuschlag
Minioper Inside Out
Mirihi
Galaxy 0
Manfred Wakolbinger
Under the Surface
Text
August Ruhs
As if it fell to Earth
Text
Brigitte Huck
Up from the Skies
Text
Alexandra Schantl
Talk with Manfred Wakolbinger
Interview
Bench and Gate – St. Pölten
Placements + Galaxies – Kunsthaus Saalfelden
Up from the Skies – ZEIT KUNST Niederösterreich, Krems
Körpergehäuse/Animated Body
Lightning – Wien
Franz Graf, Eva Schlegel, Manfred Wakolbinger – Galerie Fotohof
Austria Davaj! Der Gipfel des kreativen Österreichs – Schusev State Museum, Moskau
Desert Flights
Galaxies
Forces
Forces
Bubbles
Rendez-Vous – Leobersdorf
Verbeugung – Kirche St. Wolfgang
Galapagos
GC/ESP
Travellers
Receiver – St. Pölten
Einzelpräsentation – Stadtgalerie Klagenfurt
Einzelpräsentation – Hipphalle, Gmunden
Travellers
Strömung – Museum Kuppersmühle Duisburg
Transformator – Linz
Placements
Peter Noever
Below Point Zero of Art
Text
David Espinosa
Seven–Tenths Inspiration, Three–Tenths Fascination
Text
Ohne Titel – Perg
Ohne Titel – Krems Stein
Elisabeth Schlebrügge
Close to the Surface
Text
Ohne Titel – Wien
Ohne Titel – Wien
Ohne Titel Linz
Ohne Titel
Sputnik – 20er Haus & Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Wien
Rainer Fuchs
Embodiments of space
Text
Lóránd Hegyi
Sculpture as an objectification of relationality
Text
Hans-Werner Schmidt
Wakolbinger’s Art Figures
Text
Brigitte Huck
Sputniks, UFOs and other extraterrestrials
Text
Schweben
La Coesistenza dell’ Arte – Biennale di Venezia
Einzelpräsentation – Galerie Gritta Insam, Wien
Schausammlung Museum für angewandte Kunst (MAK), Wien
Three Staele with Different Head Parts
Einzelpräsentation – Museum Moderner Kunst, Palais Liechtenstein, Wien
Glas Kupfer
Einzelpräsentation – Galerie Gritta Insam, Wien
Peter Sloterdijk
Poetics of Detachment
Text
documenta8, Kassel
Innen und Aussen
Sockel
Stuart Morgan
The limits of selfhood
Text
Der Anfang