DALPRA

Curated by Günther Oberhollenzer

What first strikes you is the color. Then the form. Only after that does the question perhaps arise of what you are actually seeing. In Mario Dalpra's work, figures, faces, or organic structures can emerge on the canvas as in the object – and yet elude clear definition. The familiar and the foreign, the representational and the abstract, merge into one another.

Dalpra is primarily known in the Austrian and international art scene as a sculptor. His colored and often highly polished bronzes possess an unmistakable presence. His painting has been less visible until now. The exhibition deliberately focuses on this, showing a large selection of paintings from recent years. They make it clear that Dalpra is not simply a sculptor who also paints. Rather, he works in both media on the same artistic question: How can independent pictorial and bodily worlds emerge from color, form, movement, and surface?

In his paintings, alongside figures and faces, we encounter organic forms, lines, and color fields that develop a life of their own. The eye searches for something familiar, finds it for a moment, and then loses it again. Color does not remain a pure surface, but becomes a sculptural material that creates forms, opens up spaces, and sets perception in motion.

What begins in painting as line, surface, and color gains volume and weight in the sculptures. The highly polished colored surfaces reflect light and surroundings and change their effect with the viewer's position. Painting and sculpture thus appear less as separate areas of work than as two different paths in a search for form.

Especially in a present shaped by digital images, these analog media possess a special sensual quality. Canvas and bronze have surface, weight, resistance, and spatial presence. They demand time and physical proximity. Dalpra's works do not primarily want to be explained. They want to be seen – and reward a second look.

The exhibition brings together works from the Werner Trenker Collection. Their commitment is exemplary for the importance of private collectors: for supporting artists, accompanying them long-term, and not least for making visible works that have received less attention in the public art scene until now.

WERNER TRENKER COLLECTION The Werner Trenker Collection is an Austrian private collection. The works by renowned contemporary artists in the collection are regularly shown in Austrian and international museums.