Between Sound and Glitch

Editor Nicole Seipp-Isele

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An exploded bullet, digital glitches and an old mirror: at the Hermann Haller studio, ‘*.sculptr’ demonstrates just how surprisingly vibrant sculpture can be conceived today.

Following three years of restoration in accordance with heritage conservation principles, the Hermann Haller Studio on Höschgasse has reopened. The current exhibition presents contemporary works from the municipal art collection, created using digital techniques, and places them in dialogue with Haller’s sculptural thinking.

Anyone familiar with the studio’s once atmospheric ambience, with Haller’s artistic legacy on display, is likely to be taken aback upon entering the newly designed exhibition space. Fragments of what appears to be an exploded sphere are scattered liberally across the floor, shaping the visitor’s first impression. Those who allow themselves to be drawn into this unfamiliar scene will discover a small but exquisite exhibition that makes clever use of digital technologies whilst never losing sight of the connection to Haller’s craftsmanship and materiality. This creates a fascinating dialogue between analogue heritage and contemporary forms of art: Thomas Juliers’ work ‘Aftermaths’ was detonated in virtual space before being materialised via 3D printing. The work visualises a state extracted from a process, whilst simultaneously materialising an event that was originally purely virtual. This play on shifts provides a successful prelude to an exhibition that continually renegotiates boundaries.

A torso-like faun by the artist Johannes Leuzinger forms the starting point for ‘Left Hand of Johannes Leuzinger’s Flute-Playing Faun: Sketches, Glitches, Frames & Gestures’. Thomas Juliers reconstructed the fragment of the faun’s left hand and deliberately incorporated the digital translation errors into the materialisation. The work alludes to the breaks and shifts that accompany any translation between different levels and languages. The digital works are not intended as reproductions of the analogue, but as translations in the sense described by Umberto Eco: as a ‘quasi-same saying’ that keeps the difference between the media systems visible. The various materialised hand gestures are arranged on a simple wooden shelf and create the effect of a visual melody.

Through a series of photographs, Juliers establishes links with the presentation of the sphere and the hands. The photographs were taken by Gotthard Schuh and form part of Hermann Haller’s estate. One photograph shows Haller’s hands shaping a statuette, whilst the photograph next to it, also by Schuh, depicts the torso of the faun lying on the floor. Two further images depict a spherical form that stands in analogy to ‘Aftermaths’. Juliers thus successfully illustrates the processual nature of the sculpture as a never-completed object.

The work ‘Figuline Stories – Fractures of a Lifetime’ lives up to its name: The collective ‘Lithic Alliance’, founded by David V. Keller, digitised Hermann Haller’s clay works and, through video animation, imbued them with a dynamism that detaches them from their original intention of pure representation. Here, the material has been placed in an imaginary environment in which it addresses its natural authenticity and reflects on how this has been distorted by figurative representation.

And the visitors themselves are also staged and become part of the process. A mirror from Hermann Haller’s studio frames both the space and the people within it, thereby continually giving rise to new works of art that constantly engage with the exhibition itself. It is a performativity that derives its dynamism from the tension between tradition and the present. The reflection also suggests digital surfaces that constantly confront us with ourselves.

For conservation reasons, the pieces from Hermann Haller’s estate are currently in storage and are due to return to the studio in 2028. Anyone who has visited ‘*.sculptr: Between Screen and Painting’ will certainly see Hermann Haller in a completely different light.