Rudolf Polanszky

de Hans Ulrich Obrist, Francesco Stocchi

A contributor to the artistic landscape of Vienna, Polanszky makes multidisciplinary works that embrace chance occurrence. His fundamentally improvisational practice marries conceptual philosophies with varied modes of production, resulting in compositions that oscillate between dual identities as concrete objects and symbols of subjective perception. Growing up in the immediate wake of the Viennese Actionist movement of the 1960s, Polanszky began his practice making satirical films, paintings, and performance art pieces that countered the Actionists' graphic focus on living bodies in their own performance works. To create his Sprungfedernzeichnungen (Coil Spring Drawings, 1983-85), for example, he bounced around a paper-covered room atop a large metal spring, wielding an elongated paintbrush in each hand, leaving behind painted and graphic traces of his uncontrolled motions.