Károly Klimó requires patience. The power of his paintings is not the ethereally gentle kind that captivates us only at a second glance. It demands active engagement, it sets the viewer's vision and thought in motion, it takes time. There is no trace of the lightness of touch that we might have experienced in passing. Klimó discovered early on and made his own way what is known as informel, which in Europe dates from the 1940s and has continued on this path ever since, untiringly and unperturbed in defiance of the diversity of art and politics that swirl around him.
Whether it's a dialogue with a poem by Thomas Bernhard or a passionate play with colour and movement, Klimó observes creation like a child gazing at it, telling the story of the birth of light, earth and white flames, but also the shadow and melancholy of the departing sun. He plays freely with the motif of the counterpoint, until he turns it into a backhand and lights a black flame against the bright yellow background. The human silhouette of the 'Summer of the Old Women' is the last to resist the approaching autumn and its rampage is aided by the accumulated strength of the elements. Klimó's paintings are immersive, yet not to be lost in, for even the most ferocious of the canvas's boundaries are surely at rest on the surface. It is the painted antagonism of an artist who radiates calm and creates a fierce force.
The contradiction that raged in Károly Klimó is an essential element of Informel art, and it developed around 1945/46 around the Ecole de Paris as a counterpoint to geometric abstraction. The conscious turning away from form and the equally conscious determination to give meaning to the formless in the 1940s in addition to being a huge provocation to the viewer's visual experience, also gave a liberating impulse to the possibility of expression for artists who could finally put emotions and thoughts on canvas without constricting patterns. Károly Klimó makes use of this freedom by introducing intellectual control and secret themes into his works, thus transcending the limits of informality. He also retains to this day the carefree spontaneity of his creative energy. His images thus tell the story of a life full of a thirst for knowledge and questions, unafraid to make choices and joyfully flirting with diversity.
Sculptor Willi Weiner is not concerned with the mass, but with the shell. He is not interested in the heavy, the hard, the dense, but rather in the light, the soft, the airy, the surface surrounding the body. Weiner welds thin-walled hollow bodies from 1 mm thick Corten steel sheet in a patchwork fashion, resembling columns, vessels or crystals, but often evoking mountains, islands, lakes, caves - landscapes - to represent stone and water, the hardest and the softest. Even the sight of the sea can appear almost tangible lying on the floor or hanging on the wall.
Weiner makes his plastic metal objects in an improvisational way, not aiming for perfection in geometric precision. These works stand out for their irregularity, for the unvarnished traces of machining such as hammering, for the only roughly sanded welds, which are rarely straight. The sculptor likes to contrast the rust of oxidised metal surfaces (tone) with silky, lacquered surfaces (colour), thus emphasising the painterly character of his objects. Atmosphere is at the core of Weiner's formal creation. These objects are stories in themselves - they are surrounded by stories. Here, the viewer's imagination is guided by the title of the work. In Weiner's case the title is not an incidental adjunct. The titling or naming, the words are more a constituent part of his objects. They are often the starting point for his efforts to shape the sculpture.
Jens Kraeubig
