Harald Klingelhöller at Konrad Fischer

We are pleased to present „DIE WELT ERZÄHLT (ZWEIFACH, STERNFÖRMING)“, Harald Klingelhöller’s ninth solo exhibition. The sculptor, who teaches at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Karlsruhe, has been exhibiting continuously at Konrad Fischer Galerie since 1983.

Most of Harald Klingelhöller’s sculptures are preceded by linguistic formulations of ideas, memories and suggestions that, after being written down, are partially and repeatedly saved in these sculptures and linked to a spatial experience. Examples of these recurring abstract or poetic textual structures are „Ich bin hier, Du bist hier“ („I am here, you are here“), „In landscapes reacting to words“, „Das Meer bei Ebbe geträumt“ („Dreaming the sea at low tide“) or „Die Welt erzählt“ („The world is telling“), to name just a few. These can be found in the current exhibition in four different sculptural approaches: in the „Sternförmigen“ (star-shaped), the „Schweben- den“ (floating), the „Schrankversion“ (cabinet version) and the „Echo”.

Klingelhöller puts the stars at our feet, so to speak. In order to be able to keep them on the ground, he uses solid metal profiles made of copper, brass or lead with a trapezoidal cross-section. The dimensions of the upper viewing sides of the individual star rays are determined by the dimensions of the printed title-giving words, their number by the shape of the star to be formed, hence, for example, „The world is told (twofold, star-shaped)“.

The situation is similar in the „Schrankversion“ (cabinet version), whose drawer dimensions have been transferred from the words „The Floor was Grey and Everybody Brings his Questions“.

The „Schwebenden“ (floating) are new constellations of previous „Schattenversionen“ (shadow versions) in the artist’s œuvre. Klingelhöller locates the silhouettes of previous sculptures, which have been changed in size, multiplied and deformed into three dimensions, in spatial elements whose scale can only be determined relatively. In these constellations they protrude from a past presence into a fictional future space – playing with temporality and multiple spatiality.

The same is true of the „Echo“, which extends from ceiling to floor and which was measured from the acoustic spectogram of a question posed by the artist – the „echo“ as a medium of spatial depth the question „Will you be there?“ a spatial presence, from an imaginary „you“ to an imaginary „there“.

„We are dealing with a directionless, dimensionless distance when we invoke the presence of the world with our sculptures and we experience that it comes towards us as something else“*, to conclude with Harald Klingelhöller’s own words.

(*quoted from Beat Wismer’s catalog text for Skulpturenpark Waldfrieden, Wuppertal, 2013)