Harald Klingelhöller

Tucci Russo, Torre Pellice (Torino)
Through July 1

Klingelhöller’s exploration is structured around the dynamic relationship between sculpture, perception and language. Forms and linguistic elements determine the whole, which stays in harmony in an intense interlocutory relationship with space. The choice of material is fundamental to the creation of the work. The use of bronze, paper, plaster, wood and granite, an alternation between fragile and solid which plays with the three-dimensional forms of the sculptures and, at the same time, with their titles, which are ambiguous and essential to creating the meaning of the works.
At the center of the exhibition space on the first floor, the artist has placed a sculpture that literally invades the space. Called La Città nell’Opera di Thomas Pynchon ("The City in the Work of Thomas Pynchon"), it is made from the trunk of a roughly-hewn wooden cone: a metaphor for a gigantic projector radiating fragments of writings. The visitor must "circle" the work several times to interpret its meaning, bringing into play both aesthetic and linguistic components. Around this work are other sculptures made of linear, geometric structures, into which pieces of paper cut out into large letters of the alphabet have been inserted one on top of the other. The title, Nel futuro dei loro linguaggi ("In the Future of Their Languages"), the same for all the works, accentuates the ambiguous level, since Klingelhöller purposely does not tell the viewer whether he is talking about the language of the work or the language we normally use to communicate.

The works on the upper floor are indirectly related to the others. The artist has laid some sculptures out on the floor, with books on top of them, all of them open to the same page. On one of the open pages you can see reproductions of the works and on the other the repeated phrase In un paesaggio reagendo alle parole ("In a Landscape, Reacting to the Words") In this case presenting the same expression over and over again implies the constant conflict between the meaning of language and its attribution to the work, arousing in the viewer the desire to question whether it is the reality of the objects or their definability that is more important.




Tiziana Conti
Translation by Jacqueline Smith