Gerwald Rockenschaub

humanoid must not escape

Gerwald Rockenschaub's artistic approach is focused on procedures that explore space, in so doing taking recourse to a precise conception of perceptual processes in their architectural and visual combination. One of the most obvious elements of spatial definition is his use of color modules, allowing for various models of contemplation depending on the location of the beholder. This clearly modernist-structured way of proceeding can also be seen in the tableaux of differently colored acrylic glass that as a visual marker focus the precision of the spatial division at key positions.

The current show at Georg Kargl Fine Arts concentrates on the various levels of impact in the color spectrum of pink and violet hues. Heather violet, traffic purple, and ultramarine blue are the basic colors available to comprehend the complex gallery spatiality as a holistic conceptual space and implement a visual narrative chain. The entry space of the gallery is subjected to architectural reorientation in Rockenschaub's spatial remix of classical entryways. The reception console is moved to the middle of the room, and thus subject to the gaze of the beholder, backed by a new wall. The heather violet color causes the wall and the console fuse to become a single environment, defining the entryway as an identity-granting element. On the sidewall of the same color along the downward step, works of variously colored acrylic glass pointedly take their place in the overall environment. The latter makes reference to Rockenschaub's expanded approach to a painting, which the artist for over twenty years has been redefining in an industrial mix of materials, based and artistically condensed in the commercial world of logos and pictograms.

The gallery's first lower level is defined by two spatial cuboids that are placed inside each other, raising questions about the inside and outside of corporeal layers of sensitivity. In the sense of an endodermic and ectodermic curvature, this renews the perspective on the spatial axes of the artworks as well as their power of definition in light of the auratic attributions of inner and outer structures. The latter are achieved by way of the colors on the cuboid from traffic purple to ultramarine blue, which in their aesthetic impact are able to break up the spatial structure deconstructively.

A displacement in the dimensions of traditional perceptual scenarios also takes place in the main space of the gallery, closed off at the entry corners with a pink curtain. Here, Rockenschaub's minimalist formal vocabulary comes to bear, underscoring the artist's specific approach to space as colored projection foils for mental processes. The emptiness of the surrounding space defines the degree of impact of the artistic components, demanding a redefinition of auratic spatial relations by first leading visitors narrowly along the curtains, then allowing them to experience the space aas the result of a modernist-minimalist thought process.

Gerwald Rockenschaub has been invited to participate at this year's documenta, where he will be showing both older works and some more recent work.

Walter Seidl