|
Art comments
Wilfried Senoner was a craftsperson
and wanted to be an artist. He lived on the craft for art's
sake. He would not have been able to afford producing art
without the reliable craft. And without the wish of being an
artist he would presumably have remained a worse
craftsperson. The one was a necessary evil for him,
guaranteed his livelihood; but by doing the other he
apologized for it. The handicraft had been put into his
cradle. Moreover, and that distinguished him from the
community of the artistic carvers and sculptors in Gröden
Valley, he received an education, which must be called
extraordinary: four years at the Milanese art‑academy Brera.
I will never forget my visits in Wilfried's studio. The
rooms and the space in front of them were crammed with
overdimensioned saints, mangers and parts of altars which to
display in their entity he never had the possibility. He
simply lacked space for it. Its creator could at most
provide you with an address: this altar and that manger
would stand at a certain place in Bavaria, in the Styria, in
Hungary etc. He felt obliged to produce comparatively many
pieces of art.. Being an extraordinarily quickly working
artist he believed to have to create a lot of pieces of art.
Florian Kronbichler
"Art has a mandatory function", Senoner said,
''it must make the world better": "My work is not more or
less than an appeal to mankind. Senoner wants the artist to
attend to his duties: Each artist must be sure of what he
does." Senoner's artefacts are abstract and concrete, they
digress into the surreal, because he squeezes in everything,
because he overloads, because his ideas overflow. He mixes
the natural and the human, winds through a maze of shapes,
always remains poetic, often transfigured. However, his art
is meant to scare up, it is meant to be somewhat repulsive
and shocking, but at the same time it wants to solve formal
and colour‑problems. This became visible in his presentation
of the human being, his body, his passions and his horror‑ideas;
it became visible in the body hanging at the cross and the
woman who bakes bread. And even always in their reverse.
Gabriele Crepaz
|