PAUL KLEE, ROLAND KOLLNITZ

Paul Klee‘s fine-lined Tightrope Walker (Seiltänzer) (1923) and Roland Kollnitz’ fragile sculptural assemblages open up an exciting field of resonances within the exhibition. Bridging the temporal chasm that separates the contemporary era from modernity, both artists’ works share a distinct sensibility for the balancing act between formal reduction and poetic abundance. While Klee sketches a symbolically transparent space in his lithograph, Kollnitz integrates the exhibition space itself, along with all its functional elements, into his work, thus transforming the room into a temporary stage. Constructed out of linear elements, the airy pictorial space in Tightrope Walker corresponds to the real exhibition space pervaded by the forms of beams, rods, and ropes. And while Klee’s acrobat balances in the air, constantly at risk of plummeting down, the statics of Kollnitz’ objects are due to delicately balanced joints between the elements which transform the qualities of transience, processuality, and precarity into something permanent.