OPENING ON WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 28, 6 - 9 PM

We are extremely happy to present the second solo exhibition of Austrian artist Constantin Luser (*1976 Graz) at Rotwand.

A brief conversation with Constantin Luser on the occasion of the exhibition:

In recent years you have increasingly been taking the drawing, which always serves as your starting point, into three-dimensional space. What is it that interests you about transferring line into three-dimensionality?

CL: My drawings first started to become blurred, and this gave rise to an expanded spatiality. Parallel to this, drawing has always been a means for me to approach and plan sculpture. Then I began to take the lines and bend them in wire and to make sculptures directly from the drawings. This means that each line can be viewed in all sorts of ways and especially through movement. And it give rise to a series of images, which look like simple animations.

In the exhibition you have hung wire masks in a dark room, where they are lit.

CL: I see the heads as models of lines of thought, or images of how we perceive situations between people. Just as the line is also an image of a thought, or an object, or a mental image.

The works are very filigree and difficult to grasp visually. If you look at them with one eye closed you can no longer see which way they are turning, or two that are turning in opposite directions start to turn together. It's easy to trick the eye with very simple means. I find that interesting.

Alongside the mask sculptures the sound sculptures play a central role in your work. You have more or less created your own “sculptural genre” here. In this exhibition you are showing the fascinating work “ Bandoneon Intensivstation”. Visually highly seductive, the sculpture invites the viewer to play along. What role does music play in your life?

CL Making music has become very important to me, and the same obviously applies to instruments. These are functional objects, which have been developed over hundreds of years, and with which you can turn the smallest hand movements into big emotions. At the same time, benchmarks and levels of perfectionism have also been set, which can be restrictive or daunting. I am fascinated by the mechanisms and the techniques and the way you can play with these.

Translation Lucy Powell