Heimo Wallner in Limbo
Drawings in Space


 
 		 Heimo Wallner's drawing installations are comparable in many ways to the "automatic" works of the early Surrealists. Like Breton or Tanguy, Wallner engages in a type of suspension of the conscious mind as a means for expressing ideas and images of the subconscious. As the artist stated, "My work is best when I'm drawing faster than I can think." The installations are, subsequently, based on process--a process that yields an unmediated, unknown outcome.

Wallner manipulates body parts, actions, and expressions to create what he refers to as "a vocabulary of emotions." The images serve as symbols for words representing a compendium of life's experiences. Body language becomes a means for expressing the emotions that derive from human interaction and individual struggle or achievement. The primary protagonist in Wallner's work is a naked male with a mask-like face and empty eyes--a sort-of elemental, detached "everyman." His behavior is often vulgar, violent, and self-destructive. The exaggerated nature of the forms and actions, however, allows the work to be simultaneously dark and humorous.

Wallner was born in Salzburg, Austria in 1961. He entered the Vienna Academy of Art in 1981 to study sculpture. After becoming involved in student politics, he abandoned the traditional "ivory tower" curriculum, and opted, instead, to spend most of his time in the student office. The propinquity of drawing enabled Wallner to quickly put down on paper the ever-fluctuating thoughts running through his mind. In order to keep-up with this rapid-fire process, he found it necessary to simplify his forms.

Also included in the exhibition is Mao Tse Tung, Band 2,Wallner's most recent film project. To create this film, the artist drew on top of pages taken from The Selected Works of Mao Tse Tung, Volume 2. Filmed in 15 loops, the animated imagery was put down layer upon layer with each successive loop. The overlapping of mediums serves as a metaphor for the interconnectedness between personal experience and the machinations of the world around us. The film points to the disjunction between the succinct, lucid recording of history and the complex reality of everyday life.

Wallner's ability to master new processes and materials is evidenced by Miniatures,the set of prints also featured in In Limbo.The series, which was completed during a recent residency at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, marks Wallner's first attempt at intaglio printmaking.  Using drawing as a point of departure, Wallner incorporated the processes of aquatint, drypoint, and etching to create the work. "They are simple images," the artist stated, "They are about love, obsession, and relationships."

Lynne Shumow
Curator of Education