Image credits: Günter Kresser // Heidi Holleis // Gregor Sailer // Exhibition View // 35th Austrian Graphic Award, TAXISPALAIS Kunsthalle Tirol, Innsbruck, Austria
Complementary Affairs: Chaos and Order
My artistic exploration of the material of ashes, or rather, coal is currently extended by graphics and collages on paper. In terms of content, the works on paper are related to the topics entropy, chaos, system and traces, without having to explicitly depicting them. In my graphic series “Chaos and Order”, transparent graph paper, a paper belonging to mathematics, and the wavy structures of marbled cardboard are connected. That way, industrial production encounters hand-made, unique items. While graph paper is used for the precise transfer of computable coordinates, points, tangents and areas, every marbling consists of a unique pattern, which cannot be reproduced in the exact same way, despite going through the same manufacturing process. To put it another way, system and structure meet the free form. The marbling results from sliding black coal in a chaotic flowing motion across stiff cardboard. The graph paper is placed above and below the cardboard in permeable, transparent layers. The interweaving of the attached positions creates a depth, despite or perhaps just because of the materials contradicting each other. Thus, the whole sheet is covered with a net, to which the eye adjusts over time and finally does not perceive anymore at all.
(Heidi Holleis, translated by Maria Magdalena Larch)