helmut dirnaichner, as the exceptional dirnaichner, does not fit into any gallery. – as a painter who dreams of colors that he does not yet know, – as a creator of his own papers, which in form and structure almost become that which he wanted, but which live a life of their own – as a cook who loves scents, colors, liquids, who knows their interplay and changes, who sees the independent life of such processes: always changing, he does his best and accepts the results – as a biologist and geologist, he sees changes with amazement or shock – and as an artist with a vision of colors, collecting stones and colored earth, later brutally grinding them with a mortar and pestle, seeing nothing at first due to the dust, then discovering a color never before seen which he can never duplicate.

with this pulverized pigment and stone he powders the moistened paper and pounds it with a stone into a single sheet. now quieter, better able to judge, he cuts pieces out of the sheet or lays a second colored sheet on top of it. always in a state of moistness. the creation of paper allows him to deviate from the norm, creating approximately three meters of narrow, curved paper. if he uses the wall as a surface, as a carrier of the flowing forms, he can create large pictorial fields from his small, unique pieces of paper. the wall becomes the field upon which he composes his large works. he uses the air as a support for these elements, the front and back of the pieces are colored, the wind moves them, new color and form combinations develop. his world is a process.

in the large exhibition hall of the gallery klaus staudt and helmut dirnaichner will come together, as persons, as works and processes, approaches. both will surprise us with large wall installations, dirnaichner’s expansive blue formation, vibrating, softly shivering.

i see klaus staudt as a musical conductor with a long conducting baton guiding to an ascending crescendo his large, clearly defined wall of hard, alternatingly white and gray elements. every element stands clearly defined for itself, with a new angle, edge, no contact to the proximate elements, nor to the wall, which is the carrier of the work, yet the large work floats in front of it. every element floats freely as a part of a large composition. klaus staudt conducts, sets the measures and rhythms, the installation emerges from the overall impression of the room and the wall. the elements are free, the play of light and shadow very minimal, they interact as elements, as material. observed in front of the wall the spaces shift and change, the wall shrinks and expands. looking to the conductor, at klaus staudt, he is gone, the work needed his will and his idea for this white wall, but from now on the large rhythmic installation with white and light gray parts is independent, a grandiose work of visual art, minimal with a life of its own, emerging, promising surprise.

i would like to add that the various movements within the large relief, the play of light, that klaus staudt created his relief as a high relief, which was well described in the text by karolin koch. not squared windows of light, but rather high reliefs, more like doors of light with a view to the inside. the rectangular pillars of light were built by staudt from separate layers of transparent wall elements, placed upon them on both sides are diagonally divided cubes or divided rods. with both day and sunlight unexpected possibilities emerge. “light on the front surface of the elements, light on the surface of the next back surface.” front side and back side no longer exist. ever increasing light and shadow combinations appear around the rectangular pillars, as well as shadows on the surrounding walls. the large grid of shadow, merkur, stands opposite the wall installation. there are halved cubic elements as 3-dimensional cavities, whose edges throw ever-changing plays of shadow from the incoming light, setting the piece into dialog with the environment.

klaus staudt uses few elements for his reliefs and pillars. it takes courage to resist the thought that it could be boring. by declaring the light as a partner in his work, the interplay and the awareness of uniqueness openes up for the artist and the viewers.