Helga Palasser
AUSTRIA
Helga Palasser is a trained sculptor from Austria who gained her diverse working experience especially by travelling to different places around the world like California, Nepal, Zimbabwe, and several European countries. One of her specialities is modelling portraits out of clay giving them a unique liveliness and familiarity that goes far beyond mere depiction. Besides this realistic approach, a strong impetus towards abstract forms characterises her work although there is always a concrete experience in which these forms are grounded.
The heavy compact material of clay is transformed into light fine shapes that could occasionally give the impression of drawings when looked at from the distance. When looked at closer, the corporal aspect of weight imposes itself without diminishing the lightness of the forms however. In one of her works called “The Breath of Mind”, which Helga created very recently for the XIIth FLORENCE BIENNALE dedicated to Leonardo da Vinci in October 2019, the superimposition of realistic and abstract elements becomes most visible: an obviously realistic part (a big root drawn on paper) is separated from and at the same time joined to an abstract part (elements of burnt clay emerging out of the root), which leaves a great number of possibilities to one’s imagination.
Through her multifaceted works ranging from realistic sculptures to more abstract forms, Helga has always tried to challenge the usual perception and to open up new perspectives, windows into another world. Looking at the movement of the seemingly fine lines in “Third spaces”, interrupted and discontinuous but nonetheless gentle and harmonious, the thought is busy to decipher its meaning, when the gaze suddenly becomes aware of the changing shadows, the materiality and liveliness of the sculpture. Imagination is being encouraged and at the same time an immediate physical relation is established which binds the imaginative thought to this concrete world.
Text by Michael Gfrerrer.
THIRD SPACES: The Bridge to the Other is Imagination
FLOW of WAVES
BREATH of MIND
