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Notwendigkeit als Zufall
von Gustav Schörghofer

Im November und Dezember 2009 war in der Galerie Grita Insam in Wien eine Ausstellung mit Arbeiten von Roland Kollnitz zu sehen. Inmitten des Getöses von Christkindlmärkten und dem Trubel und der Glitzerwelt von Einkaufsstraßen hat Kollnitz dort einen sehr leisen Raum geschaffen. Es war sehr hell, und die Dinge standen, lagen, lehnten oder hingen. Skulpturen, die für viele im ersten Moment gar nicht als Kunstwerke zu erkennen sein werden. Roland Kollnitz verbirgt die Kunst im Beiläufigen, Vorläufigen, Vorübergehenden. Es wirkt alles zufällig. Aber ist es das?
In der Kunst von Roland Kollnitz werden große Themen der Bildhauerei spielerisch vorgeführt: Stehen, Lehnen, Tragen, Liegen, Hängen. Der Betrachter und die Betrachterin werden zum Mitgestalter. Sie können bewegen, verändern, betreten und benützen. Sich an etwas lehnen oder etwas verstellen, sich aufstützen oder etwas bewegen. Es gibt viele Bezüge zur Figur, aber nie das Bild einer menschlichen Gestalt. Diese wird durch die Betrachter den Arbeiten zur Seite gestellt. Es gibt auch viele Bezüge zum Raum und zu seinen Besonderheiten. Zu Wänden, Durchgängen, Ecken und Kanten, zu den Wandflächen und zu dem, was sie umschließen. Das Aufrechte wird vorgeführt und das Schiefe, das Waagrechte und das Flache, das Gekrümmte und das Gerade. Alles steht still und ist dauernd am Rand zur Verwandlung.
Roland Kollnitz arbeitet mit einfachen Materialien, mit Eisen, Holz, Nägeln, Kunststoff, einem Fußabstreifer, Bambus, Schalungsrohren, Aluminium usw. Es sind Dinge, die wenig kosten. Sie werden mit großer Sorgfalt behandelt. Da kommt es auf winzige Nuancen an, auf Verschiebungen, Drehungen, Abmessungen. Unmerklich entsteht so etwas, dessen Gestalt bei genauem Betrachten eine strenge Notwendigkeit erkennen lässt. Eine Notwendigkeit, die als Zufall getarnt ist.
Es wird daher kein Zufall sein, dass es im Werk von Roland Kollnitz immer wieder Bezüge zum Japanischen gibt. Die japanische Kunst kennt einen Vorbehalt gegenüber der Perfektion. Bewusst werden Mängel, Fehler, Unzulänglichkeiten nicht beseitigt, sondern belassen oder sogar herbeigeführt. Es wird etwas offen gelassen, nicht vollendet. Das Gleiche ist in der Kunst von Roland Kollnitz zu finden. Die Präzision dieser Arbeit wird erst erkennen, wer bereit ist, ihr Zeit zu schenken. Hier wird nach strengen Regeln gespielt. Aber hier spielt einer, der die Regeln so gut beherrscht, dass die Dinge wie zufällig erscheinen. Die Kunst von Roland Kollnitz bedrängt nicht durch Vollendung. Sie schafft Raum für neue Möglichkeiten. Sie lässt aufatmen.   

In: Welt der Frau, 2009.
 

Sculpture as Counterpart and Alter Ego
by Rainer Fuchs

Regarding the way in which we deal with everyday situations and things, seeing and observing—as complex acts of orientation and interpretation—are always more or less purposeful actions. Speech, in general, is a purposive act and therefore subjected to largely automatized and internalized rules, which it both upholds and redefines. Obliviousness and a complacent existence are interrelated states, and disregarding precisely this interconnection suggests a reality that is taken for granted and left unquestioned. Absorber in our everyday lives, we usually conduct ourselves without the necessary inner distance from this quotidian existence. It is an escape from this scenario of life's unrecognized enigmas—exposing them as illusions and making them visible in a productive manner—that has proven to be one of the most rewarding tasks of art. Exposing as questionable precisely that which we had thought was familiar demands strategies of intervention. In their diverse forms of critique and poetic displacement or permeation, these strategies define the history of art as a medium of reflection.
 

This is the framework of art history within which Roland Kollnitz produces his sculptures, installations, photographs and videos, moving along the gaps between normalcy and inscrutability, which our common sense continually attempts to obscure. In his artistic practice, Kollnitz's intention is not to obscure and exalt reality; on the contrary, he wants to make it better understood. This is especially discernible in his aptitude for observing, precisely and critically, the spaces and rooms to which his sculptures refer, making adjustments to the architecture an this basis in order to optimize the conditions of the space. These adjustments may entail removing an awkward skirting board or, as in the case of the MUMOK, finding a permanent solution for the rather bad lighting. Whatever the case may be, his material or poetic interventions of space are always based on highly rational operating systems. We could also define his approach as a classification system with which he lays bare and reorganizes the often chaotic and irrational structure of public spaces and norms. That his art does not merely react to contexts but quasi infects them and incorporates them is indicative of an expanded concept of sculpture, wherein each individual sculptural object is inscribed with its link to the real world of objects as if quoting reality. It also defines the relation between the art of sculpture and the reality of space as an inter-weaving of form, material and function.
 

In his installation in MUMOK's vestibule, Kollnitz has staged a "brightened up" interplay between sculpture and architecture. By replacing the existing fluorescent lamps in the stairwell, he has created an optimal space for his sculptures and declared the very act of altering or improving the presentation conditions an integral part of his work. Steeped in a yellowish light, the true gray tone of the basalt could not thus far be perceived as such, but the new fluorescent lamps in a colder hue of white bring out the true material qualities and color of the stone. In addition, the daylight-balanced fluorescent tubes enliven the somewhat depressing and dingy atmosphere in the lower levels of the buildings. However, this alteration, not necessarily perceptible to the visitor as an artistic intervention, is not the only lighting measure taken in the installation. In the opening in the entrance area, which allows a view onto the lower levels of the stairwell, Kollnitz has mounted several fluorescent lamps that are not in line with the orthogonality of the architectural frame. They strike us immediately as light sculptures, making us aware of the artificiality of the rest of the lighting. And it is light (that makes others visible but does not usually receive much attention) that becomes the very motif of the work.

Along with the space, this light also illuminates the chain, made of round aluminum links and hanging over Zobernig's Weißer Kubus (White Cube) as the central motif in the entrance hall; it follows the course of the chain over the glass balustrade of the entrance hall down to the chain links lying in a heap an the floor of the lowest level, as if they had fallen to the ground when the chain was ripped apart. Fragility and precarious balance, as well as the idea of suddenly crashing down to the stone floor, guide our perception. By calling the installation small drum roll, Kollnitz plays on this temporal and acoustic aspect as its latent potential. Like a remark made in passing—linking the mental image of a rattling chain with theatricality and acrobatics, an image that oscillates between the circus-like and the military—the title inspires one to read the chain as a trace of a process and of a discharge, whose original tension still seems to be present in the imbalanced length of dangling chain. Its unstable position also makes us aware of the Cube's breathtaking structural stability, which we usually fail to notice. As an architecture-related sculpture, the chain plays on architecture's reference to sculpture itself. While reminding us that the White Cube, introduced later as a spatial bridge, is both sculpture and architecture, it also uses the Cube as a plinth. It now adorns the cool and unembellished corpus with a decorative "accessory." Thus, the oscillation between minimalistic-conceptual sobriety and narrative abundance that characterizes Kollnitz's own sculpture finds expression in the poetically charged reference to Zobernig's minimalist gesture and the emptiness of the museum's vestibule.
 

In the same way as Zobernig improved the spatial conditions and exhibition potential with the cube, Kollnitz too optimizes the museum space through his light installation. What both artists have in common is that their site-specific interventions are not, or rather are not to be, immediately recognizable as art. Both artists make the usual demarcation between art's utility value and symbolic value the subject of debate, yet without renouncing the allegorical references in artistic reflection. Just as the museum's architecture "appears" in Zobernig's work, his concept also "comes to light" in Kollnitz's light and chain installation. It is as though the interlinking rings were representing the text-context "chain" initiated by Zobernig and literally tearing themselves away from obliviousness. Both cube and chain aim at the viewer's body by incorporating it as user (cube) or inciting its touch (chain). Since chains can adorn the body or enfold it, it is obvious that the constellation of cube and chain is also to be seen as an anthropomorphic symbol, the White Cube interpreted as an abstracted fragment of the body.
 

Perceiving sculptures as bodies with an order of their own, whose proportions are based on human dimensions as the viewer's counterpart, is fundamental to Kollnitz's definition of art. Characteristic for this concept is yet another sculpture on the lowest level, which is placed like a vis-à-vis of the chain installation. Since anthropomorphic aspects are represented by fragments of objects and materials that seem familiar to us from our everyday working and living contexts, such sculptures embody experiences and memories that are associable with these objects and are the mirror image of both their viewer and his/her material world. They are only capable of this mirroring because they are neither entirely one nor the other, but both at once. This is a world that is held in limbo, one that is destabilized and turned on its head. It is noteworthy that in his performative works, Kollnitz has always dope the handstand in order to gain distance (through a physical defamiliarization) to the normal way of seeing things and their euthanizing logic. Hanging downwards like the chain and at the mercy of gravity, the artist tips himself off-kilter and places himself in a tense state of balance. It seems like a literal leap from sculpture as counterpart or vis-à-vis to sculpture as alter ego, which opens our eyes to the pitfalls of routine insofar as it disrupts the normal gaze.
 

In: Roland Kollnitz, small drum roll, Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, 2008, p: 43-47.