ALFRED HABERPOINTNER
Adventure in the Head

ALFRED HABERPOINTNER

1966 * in Ebenau near Salzburg

1980-1984 College for Sculpture in Hallein

1985-1991 University of Design Linz

1997 Theodor Körner Prize for the Promotion of Science and Art

2001 Prize of the Province of Upper Austria

Where simple forms are emphasized, they often come to the fore. Thus we recognize in the head, almost reduced to a kind of three-dimensional silhouette, a recurring motif in Alfred Haberpointner’s work, but in the midst of the sculptor’s works, which are characterized by abstraction, such isolated motifs lead us to other considerations. This may be due to his intention; the move away from working exclusively abstractly, which drew him to the head.

For many of the works, one material, usually wood, is central. At the same time, material visibility is never in the foreground. Surfaces on the heads and panels, for example, are broken up by carefully drawn cracks that arrange themselves into spiral-like swirls. On closer inspection, their plasticity is revealed and we are thrown back to the materiality of the work. However, the patterns are not an approximation of the natural, the annual rings or the grain of the wood, but an artistic decision. We can see that they are not applied with paint, but that structures have been beaten into the wood, often reinforced with color pigment.

Haberpointner attempts to fundamentally rework the material with surface treatment, for example with continuous axe strokes into the wood. While he originally wanted to reproduce the grain as a given, the “destruction” of these visible traces of the natural – the incorporation of his own trace – became a new concern. A new structure is created through long edges or cracks caused by this treatment, which often run against the grain. The small interventions, the incisions that create a play of material and opening, reorganize the texture.

(Maximilian Lehner)