my personal gallery
Bruno Gironcoli, column with a death’s head 1968/69; 1981; die-cast aluminium, brass, iron, glass, cloth; Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, December 2005
Gironcoli has reworked this motif repeatedly since 1968, there are numerous different versions – both in sketch and object form.
Only a thin, delicate barrier separates the observer outside from the condition within. Nothing human is visible, nothing distorted, yet also nothing distorting. The interrelationships between the things here remain inscrutable, are there connections between them? References to each other? It seems more to be about a succinct statement, about an unaroused, almost distanced display of an existing state of things, of circumstances. It does not hint at any kind of action.
Does it represent something external, i.e. circumstances, or something internal, hidden, emotional states? Is what appears so foreign viewed externally the expression of internal foreignness, alienation? Whatever the case, no loud accusation is levelled, no denouncement takes place, there is no scream, no sudden awakening of abomination, it is simply a statement.
