Klaus Pinter
Seine Arbeiten sind u.a. in folgenden Sammlungen vertreten: MOMA Museum of Modern Art, NYC, Centre National d´Art et de la Culture Georges Pompidou, Paris, Museum Moderner Kunst, Wien, Albertina, Wien
Einzelausstellungen und Installationen (Auswahl):
1962 Galerie Fuchs, Wien
1969 Galerie Zwirner, Köln
1970 Live, Museum des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts, Wien
Live, Museum of Contemporary Crafts, New York City
Live, State University of N.Y., Buffalo
1971 Cover, Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld
Eatable Architecture, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minn.
Gallery of Contemporary Art, Winston Salem, NYC
1972 Kunsthalle Nürnberg1973 Kunsthalle Hamburg
1977 "Archéologie de la ville", Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
1982 Palais Clam Gallas, Wien
1983 "Stratigraphische Objekte", Galerie Lang, Wien
1985 "Neue Arbeiten", Museum moderner Kunst - Palais Ferstel, Wien
1986 "N 48° 53‘ 46‘‘ E 02° 23‘ 18‘‘", Cité des Sciences et des Technologies, La Villette, Paris
1987 "Das große ZER", Oberösterreichisches Landesmuseum, Linz
1988 "Das große ZER", Niederösterreichisches Landesmuseum – Minoritenkirche Krems
Galerie Lang, Wien
Künstlerhaus, Klagenfurt
"Natur", Kunstverein Horn
1989 AR/GE Kunst, Galerie Museum, Bozen
Galerie Thoman, Innsbruck
"The Cairo Project", National Center of Fine Arts, Kairo
1990 Galerie Margine, Zürich
1991 "Les soixante-quatre orchidées du Trocadéro", Musée National des Monuments français, Paris
Galerie Haus Geiselhart, Reutlingen
Konglomerate, Galerie Lang und echoraum, Wien
1993 Mengsel, Galerie im Stifterhaus, Linz
Galerie am Stein, Schärding
Galerie Margine, Zürich
Galerie Heitsch, München
Galerie Becker, Köln
1995 "Das Petersburg Projekt", Akademie der Wissenschaften Russlands, Navicula Artis St. Petersburg
Galerie Heike Curtze, Wien
1997 "Palimpsest", Akademisches Kunstmuseum der Universität Bonn mit Kunstmuseum Bonn
Galerie Hohenthal und Bergen, München-Köln
1998 "Tätowierte Götter", Installation in der Abgusssammlung des Instituts für Klassische Archäologie,
Universität Salzburg, Alte Residenz (Salzburger Festspiele, 1998)
1999 "Tätowierte Göttin", Installation im Theseustempel, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Wien
"Paravents", Galerie Heike Curtze, Wien
2000 "Wiener Mischung", Installation mit unbekannten Objekten aus dem Depot des Historischen
Museums der Stadt Wien, Hermesvilla
2002 "Rebonds", Una oevre éphemère por le Panthéon, Centre des monuments nationaux
2003 "Neue Malerei - Wandobjekte und Montagen zu ephemeren Großstadtskutlpturen,
Galerie Francoise Heitsch, München
2004 "Neue Malerei Wandobjekte und Montagen zu ephemeren Großstadtskutlpturen,
Galerie Heike Curtze, Wien
2005 "Collision" Berlin-Mitte, Parochialkirche, Erster Berliner Kunstverein
"Collision au goût baroque", Galerie Heike Curtze, Berlin
Architekturfragmente, Robert Koch Hörsaal, Berlin
2006 "La conquête de l’air", Galerie Heike Curtze Wien
2007 "Corps en Rotation. Selected works/Selection d’œuvres 2005–2007", Galerie Pièce Unique, Paris
"Haus-Rucker-Co Live again", Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz
2008 "Corps en Rotation». Selected works/Selection d’œuvres 2005–2007", Centro di arti Blu di Prussia, Neapel
Gruppenausstellungen (Auswahl):
Plastic as Plastic, Museum of Contemporary Crafts, New York City
1970 "Between", Kunsthalle Düsseldorf
1971 "Recent Acquisition Show", Museum of Modern Art, NY
1972 Documenta 5, Kassel
1974 "Österreichische Avantgarde", Innsbruck, Basel, Karlsruhe
1975 "Öberösterreichische Avantgarde", Linz
1988 "Modern Dreams", The Institute of Contemporary Art, The Clocktower Gallery, NYC
1989 "Wien - Vienna 1960-90", Museum für Moderne Kunst, Bozen und Palazzo della
Permanente, Mailand
1990 "Österreichische Skulptur", Secession, Wien
1993 "Haus-Rucker-Co Retrospektive, Kunsthalle Wien
1995 "Wasser und Wein", Kunsthalle Krems
1996 "Schwere-Los", Oberösterreichisches Landes-Museum, Linz
Museum Ludwig, Budapest
"Kunst aus Österreich", Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn
"Der Rhein", Rheinisches Landesmuseum, Bonn
Museum Commanderie von Sint Jan, Nijmegen
"Die Sechziger Jahre – Als alles möglich wurde", Schloss Herberstein/Steiermark
1997 "Artists for Nature", Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn
1998 The Inflatable Movement. Pneumatic and Protest 1968, The Architectual League, New York City
Museum auf Abruf – Der ironische Blick, Sammlung der Stadt Wien
"Des Eisbergs Spitze", Kunsthalle Wien im
Museumsquartier
1999 25 Jahre Galerie Heike Curtze, Wien
"Pneumatique et Politique. L’imaginaire gonflable de 1968", Institut français d’architecture
"The Inflatable Movement. Pneumatic and Protest 1968", Royal Institute of British Architects, London
2000 "Accrochage de réouverture du Centre National d’art et de culture Georges Pompidou, Paris
"Radical Architecture", Museum für Angewandte Kunst Köln
"Den Fuß in der Tür", Künstlerhaus Wien
2001 "Les années pop", Centre National d’art et de culture Georges Pompidou, Paris
"Arquitectura radical", Museum Valencia, Villeurbanne, Institut d’art contemporain
2002 "Arquitectura radical", CAAM, Las Palmas (Gran Canaria) und Museo de Arte contemporaneo, Sevilla
2004 "The Austrian Phenomenon", Architekturzentrum Wien
2005 "Bing Bang. Destruction et création dans l’art du 20e siècle", Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
"Summer of Love. Art of the Psychodelic Era", Tate Liverpool und Kunsthalle Schirn, Frankfurt
2006 "Le mouvement des images", Centre George Pompidou, Paris
"Die Enzyklopädie der wahren Werte. Die
Wiederkehr des Gleichen in Architektur Design
Lifestyle Politik, ein Passagenwerk", Künstlerhaus Wien (gemeinsam mit David Pinter)
2007 "Between 1969–73», Kunsthalle Düsseldorf
"Nouvelle présenation des collections du musée national", Centre George Pompidou, Paris
"Tommorrow Now - Wgen design meets science fiction", Musam, Musée d´Art
Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxemburg
2009 "Mind Expanders", Museum Moderner Kunst, Wien
"1968. Die Große Unschuld", Kunsthalle Bielefeld
"Cold War Modern: Art – Design, 1945–70", V&A;, London
Klaus Pinter and his curious flying machines
Klaus Pinter’s artistic approach is as distinctive, unusual and extravagant as his installations, which, for more than forty years, have been floating free of passing fashions with fluidity, plasticity, lightness and humour – borne along by the aesthetic currents of the time, but immune to their attraction.
In founding the Haus-Rucker&Co; group in Vienna with two architects, Pinter placed himself on the margins of art’s pure forms and autonomous works. He was a precursor of the “installation”, in other words the placing of a work in a given situation or context (even if virtual). Right from his first “pneumatic” structures, the inventor in him was inspired, if not assimilated, by the poet. And throughout his career he has carried on in this vein with consistency and rigour, in forms and modalities that are continually renewed. The “pneumatic” nature of his installations is actually to be taken in an etymological sense, as referring to a vital breath, a soul; and not just because they are infused with an ideational process, but because they overfly (and sometimes collide with) history and culture. These ephemeral installations, real or utopian, are ephemerides of modernity that are in dialogue with the past.
Collision Berlin-Centre, 2005, was a large, semi-translucent sphere that levitated in an apse of Berlin’s oldest baroque church, the Parochialkirche, which the ravages of time have robbed of its stucco decor, leaving it looking like a Romanesque construction. The big bubble reflected light and echoed the sobriety of the place, but contrasted, in its delicacy, with the weightiness of the stone and its charge of history.
La Conquête de l’air, 2006, which was created on the occasion of the Mozart year in Vienna, marked a change of register and tone. Besides the composer’s aerial lightness, Pinter was celebrating the century of the Enlightenment and the facetious folly of rococo. In the courtyard of the Albertina he installed a transparent inflatable structure whose form suggested a hot-air balloon, alluding to the fact that Mozart’s lifetime, which saw culture attaining an unprecedented level of refinement, corresponded to the period when industrial civilisation was taking off, and when humans were able, for the first time, to overcome terrestrial gravity. The captive balloon, with its elegance and crystalline purity, was arrayed in burlesque elements – chairs and decorative gilded fragments that produced an effect of asteroidal dust.
And one will also, no doubt, recall the imposing Rebonds installation that Pinter created in Paris in 2002 for the severe, majestic setting of the Panthéon. Into this frozen temple of the Republic, designed by Soufflot and completed by Quatremère de Quiny, which honours Great Men and materialises in marble the aesthetic canons of neoclassicism, he introduced the mischievousness of mannerism. His gigantic pneumatic sculpture, mounted on a helical armature, and placed in the centre of the nave, reproduced the decoration of the building’s concave vault in a convex anamorphosis. Illusionist reflection or historical rebound?
Rotor, 2007, is a sort of “bachelor machine” designed for the Pièce Unique gallery in Rue Jacques Callot. Unlike Pinter’s previous installations, it does not occupy an historical setting, but has surreptitiously insinuated itself into this enclosed space like an unidentified flying object made up of four different-sized spheres in virtual rotation round an oblique axis.
The mechanical appearance of the work, the precision of its design and the rigour of its execution confer on it an industrial character reminiscent of a machine tool. But its pneumatic envelope, carefully folded, gives it a playful aspect that suggests a huge spinning top in precarious equilibrium, surmounted by a condom. Is it a rotating propeller, a giant dragonfly from some other place and time, an alien’s parachute or a model for a new tower of Pisa, soon to be constructed in Shanghai or Dubai? Hard to tell. In fact this non-identifiable object is more likely to make one think of the first flying machine dreamt up by Leonardo da Vinci. Or one might be reminded of the helical perspex sculptures made by the brothers Gabo and Pevsner, though there is something wild and baroque about it that is a long way from constructivist austerity.
What is disconcerting, but also fascinating, about Pinter’s work, and what underlies his originality, is the exactitude that is the mark of the engineer or the architect, combined with the imagination of a poet and a penchant for derision.
All things considered, Klaus Pinter is not so much an extraterrestrial artist as a volatile synthesis of Jean Baudrillard, Professor Calculus and Alfred Jarry.
Yves Kobry
(Translated by John Doherty)