Rudolf Polanszky: <br>HYPERBOLISCHE RÄUME

3 November – 3 December 2010
Opening: 2 November 2010, 7 pm

It is perhaps (for a writer) a happy coincidence that “hyperbole” and “ellipsis” can mean a rhetorical as well as a geometric figure. While “ellipsis” in the rhetorical sense is defined as something omitted and in the geometric sense (ellipse) defines a closed curve, “hyperbole” means an exaggeration in the rhetorical sense, and in the geometric, an open symmetrical figure with two branches, which, like an ellipse is based on two mirrored axes. Both geometric figures play fundamental roles – separated into elliptical and hyperbolic in non-Euclidean geometry, which suspends the kind of geometry of our familiar three-dimensional space in which the parallel axiom is valid.

It may be a rhetorical exaggeration when Rudolf Polanszky refers to these spaces, since he cannot escape, with his objects from the surrounding space, which is subject to gravity and our immediate, on-off view; it is an appropriate reference in his working method, which develops in uneven symmetries, distortions, transformations, and mirrorings, among other things, and brings the imaginary axis of his efforts into play. Polanszky has created an evolving system that translates so-called creativity into self-control and self-regulation. It is not a closed system, since he takes the liberty, whenever he likes, to introduce new elements into it (and calls it: “extension of the elementary base”). Also, the idea as Einfall (incidence) finds correspondence in this; it appears in Polanszky’s vocabulary for example as an “ad-hoc synthesis.” Unlike conceptual art, in which all too often a poor idea cannot justify the enormous effort of its pompous presentation, the representations of this artist’s ideas take place in a structurally pre-defined space, quasi musically, as an aesthetic encore that always refers to a developmental history. The productive-time axis is not infrequently left to an independent outer form, for example, the weather, which supplements the materials used in the back courtyard of the studio. One is concerned here not with meaningful things, defined representation or logical statements, but in elevation of lines, cross beams stretched lengthwise, overlappings – curved, folded, and wrapped – and surfaces nested into one another, hence the meaningful reference to a structure-sensitive mathematics, or, group theory, where symmetries, transformations, and inverses have their exact functions.

All of us move between systems and the most common of these can be conceived roughly as sociological or economic. Polanszky distinguishes himself above all through the interest in an objectifying and knowledge-oriented conversation with himself, in an analysis of his perceptions and resisting the conformist market system in which representations for collectors are often only socially applicable headdresses, which for artists usually constitute mere niches of assimilation, of placing the anchors of their paid efforts in the short-lived currents. In Rudolf Polanszky’s work, it becomes clear that the invention of style has to do with reduction of what is used and related to and with the exact observation of the possible points of connection and mutation of the introduced forms.

Text: Benedikt Ledebur, Vienna 2010.