GRAZ.- The Graz artist Hartmut Skerbisch (1945–2009) is considered one of the most distinguished contemporary artists in Austria today, whose works always contain within them a political intention. This retrospective in the Kunsthaus Graz focuses primarily on his media works.

Hartmut Skerbisch was awarded the honorary prize for fine art of the Region of Styria at yearend 2009. This took place posthumously. The artist had long been worthy of an award, his artistic creations having made an impact far beyond the regional boundaries. His work had long since been established as a contribution to a second generation of Austrian concept artists.

When Hartmut Skerbisch arrived as an artist in 1969, an atmosphere of renewal prevailed in Graz –the process of interaction with international art developments was well under way. Information received before others and a bold commitment, not only on the part of provincial politicians, accounted for a highly advanced art scene.

Putting Allspace in a Notshall was the programmatic title of a conception that Skerbisch, together with the architect Manfred Wolff-Plottegg, planned for ‘trigon’ in 1969. As a former student of architecture, Hartmut Skerbisch was profoundly and unquestioningly occupied with problems of space and our perception of it. He analysed this central theme in the most varied ways throughout his artistic career.

The eponymous pun by James Joyce already refers to the fact that Skerbisch was striving towards compressing space, which not least of all can be deduced from the new media and which the artist already recognised as a possibility for him early on. Electronic space removes places, brings the far-off nearer and re-defines space –it attempts to lead us to our present. In this, art offers a framework in which the public is to have a share.

The term ‘notshall’ refers to the English word ‘nutshell’ and thus to a state of condensing – similar to ‘Aleph’ in Jose Luis Borges. This bundling of simultaneities and apparent noncoherences is also found in the later work of Hartmut Skerbisch. For the artist, art as the focus of what exists both in real and in conceptual terms was key. Categories such as architecture and sculpture become independent and dissolve –they are to be found again in the context of conceptual or media art.

Starting from the central media installation Putting Allspace in a Notshall , which is owned today by the Universalmuseum Joanneum, the exhibition in the Kunsthaus Graz traces the work of media artist Hartmut Skerbisch. A key role is played in this by the partial reconstruction of his legendary exhibition zepter und gleißender stein [sceptre and glistening stone] (Neue Galerie Graz, 1977).