ALFRED HABERPOINTNER 2021

Alfred Haberpointner's extremely comprehensive exhibition of over 50 works features works in a wide variety of materials such as bronze, steel and, above all, his preferred material, wood. The artist chops, fibers, cuts and splits this natural material with great physical effort. In doing so, he not only pushes the limits of the material, but also his own. It is a mixture of an aggressive, manic-obsessive and a highly concentrated, meditative work. In Alfred Haberpointner's works one senses an intense combination of vehemence and delicacy, from which they generate their tension-laden energy.

Colorfulness is created by stain, which is applied with a brush or sprayed on. In the wall objects, the application of paint thickens and darkens toward the center, creating an incredible sense of depth or the impression of explosive drifting apart. Colorfulness and the entanglement with space also play a role in the heads, which for the artist are representative of the human form. The latter is created by drying cracks or horizontal, vertical and cross-shaped incisions brought about by the artist. These heads are not a likeness, they do not represent specific physiognomies, they are, like their primeval predecessors, always unchanging archaic archetypes of being human.

With his works Alfred Haberpointner addresses the great themes of sculpture, volume and mass, but also weight and proportion. There is always a certain lightness involved, a balancing in space. This interplay of weight and lightness, mobility and being anchored in a standing position can be observed particularly well in the „Gewichtungen“ ("Weightings"). On delicate legs polished and patinated bronze formations hold themselves in balance. They show dents, indentations and dings, whose weighting must be balanced sometimes on one side, sometimes on the other by the stand. Relationships of forces, the ingenious distribution of load and force, as well as a complex interplay of form, material, surface and sign, of weight and composition play a major role in all works.

Alfred Haberpointner's art is without the need for explanation; it speaks to deeper, more intuitive levels. At the center of his work is always nature, existence par excellence. Thus, all that which has always surrounded and preoccupied us humans. In his works, the artist retrieves nature as a primordial experience, he wants to share his sensual wealth of experience with us, to make perceptions of nature tangible by means of his sculptures. In the struggle for form, the eternal struggle between the rational and the emotional is revealed, which has rarely found such a convincing form

The exhibition is accompanied by an extensive catalog.