Karl Karner at ARCO LISBOA 2024

Karl Karner (b.1973 in Feldbach, Austria) lives and works in Feldbach, Austria. Karner studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna under Professor Heimo Zobernig.

 

Resembling fantastical-futuristic life forms (or landscapes?), Karner’s works, made of aluminum and bronze cast, exhibit finely branching structures and an organic surface, leaving behind a highly fragile impression.

 

The reference to nature, particularly botany, is obvious. Despite vaguely resembling dead trees in their vertical arrangement and barren appearance, the unconventional, almost bizarre forms of the sculptures immediately disrupt this clear image. They are based on concrete references from the animal and plant kingdom, such as mushrooms, branches, tree bark, or vineyard snails, which the artist combines into grotesque sculptural growths through casts. Additionally, fragmentary references to human intervention are hinted at when the individual elements are assembled into artistic assemblages. The idea of choreography becomes apparent when observing the sculptures. 

 

From a distance, the figurative silhouette of the objects initially comes to the forefront, only to reveal upon closer inspection a multitude of diverse organic forms, inevitably drawing the viewers' gaze into the depths of surreal land- scape scenes. These are partly patinated and partly covered with clay slip by the artist. The result is an aesthetically homogeneous overall impression that almost gives the sculptures a classical appearance. From their observer position, humans gaze upon an artistic amalgam of our reality, distorted almost beyond recognition, frozen in the moment of its creation.

 

Karner's reflections on the interplay between humans and nature seem to materialize in the sculptures: starting from the concrete motif of the spruce, which, as a particularly robust tree species in the 20th century, was predestined for reforesting forests, the full extent of human mismanagement of the past decades is vividly brought to light. In the face of climate change, tragically, the spruce is one of those tree species most severely affected by global warming. 

 

                - Sergey Harutoonian