exhibition opening: 21st June, 7 PM

Like hardly any other artist of his generation, Heinz Cibulka has committed himself to the concept of the open work of art. With curiosity and unbiasedness he has appropriated the most diverse media: traditional, such as object, text or performance; and new, such as photography, video and computer graphics, and made them tools of his worldly wisdom. These qualities mirror the open approach with which he traces the phenomena of the world, of life and of creatureliness. The media used by the artist interrelate in a state of oscillating conceptual tension, and this can be interpreted as a reference to his method: investigating according to unconscious rules. The fact that he often supplements his sensory organs with technical apparatuses, while refusing their ‘professional’ handling, underlines the experimental character of both his approach and his works.

The exhibition The Cadence of Light and Dark presents works of all creative periods of Heinz Cibulka: starting from his collaborations in actions by Rudolf Schwarzkogler and Hermann Nitsch, followed by early objects and assemblages, his typical “picture poems” (combinations of four photographs with Austrian, European, African, Asian and American motives), to the point of recent large-scale digital collages and multimedia pieces.

curated by: alien productions (Martin Breindl, Norbert Math, Andrea Sodomka)

Heinz Cibulka, 1943: born in Vienna. 1957–1961: attended the Vienna Federal Training and Research Institute for Graphic Arts. Since 1972: photographic series and picture poems, objects and assemblages, digital photo collages and various new-media works in collaboration with other artists; in addition: poetic and conceptual texts, performances and installations, instructor for numerous photo classes at the International Summer Academy Salzburg (Austria) and the Weinviertel Photography Weeks (various locations in Lower Austria) as well as workshops and lectures in Austria and abroad. 1980–2010: together with Magdalena Frey, documentation of major actions by Hermann Nitsch. 1989–2002: organization of various events at the FLUSS – Lower Austrian Photo Initiative (Wolkersdorf, Austria). 1997–1998: Visiting Professor for photography at the University of Applied Arts Vienna.