Art Project
offspace | galerie panoptikum.
Pure Obsession
Image: Conversion 2017 (almost finished): offspace | gallery panoptikum., Gilgenberg a.W. (Upper Austria)
The imagination is unlimited. It motivates, it drives – it is the elixir of action. No effort is too great. No work is too much. No way is too far. All adversity will be removed. We work tirelessly – the day before yesterday, yesterday, today, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow and here. The idea lives and grows – nourished by an unimaginable inner satisfaction. A satisfaction sets in which, in view of the project, fizzles out into a moment of happiness and demands more. More work. More paths and even more adversities.
The idea becomes an integral part of life, daily work and the future. The power of imagination lets us simultaneously live a future parallel reality that develops nourished by the idea. And it continuously takes on more concrete forms, so that two equal realities arise. Life in the here and now. Obsession in its purest form!
Would you like to know what really happened behind the scenes? Well, the last 4 years have not been a sticky stick. We have done a lot of work and completely renewed the entire ground floor including new underfloor heating and floors, ceilings, walls, doors .., new water pipes, new bar / counter, toilets. And much more. The last few years have been marked by a lot of work and even more sweat.
It all started with my idea a few years ago to set up an offspace gallery for photography. In order to run an offspace gallery, however, I had to create the right environment for it. So I decided to make the first floor from scratch. The first step in my plan was to pry out the old floor. Since I generally have nothing against a little work and also had nothing useful to do at the time, I thought to myself, I’ll just start. In the meantime I got a little out of breath, because I did almost everything myself, but I did it right away!
And yet: no matter how much I did, the work never seemed to want to stop. (Note: the work has still not stopped!) But after a while you saw the first changes. There was still a lot to be done, but the roughest work had already been done. And above all, it was warm. The new heating worked perfectly!
This year we’re finishing the rest of the little things. Above all, we are looking forward to the floor-length heavy molton. Then the colors. We are still discussing which color exactly. We are currently assuming that the gallery will be painted gray on the inside. Room # 03 will turn white. The photo will be available in summer!
Hommage: Studio 5133
A cold, dark & dirty space
Gilgenberg a.W. (OÖ)
Image: 2019 – STUDIO 5133, Gilgenberg a.W. (OÖ)
A tribute to my cold and dark studio. I would spontaneously claim the extreme opposite to many others. If you expect a heated, clean and white studio with large windows and a ‘chill’ couch at room temperature, you will learn better here. Rather, the opposite is the case: A cold, dark and dirty room with temperatures around 10 ° C awaits you. This is where the idea of an offspace gallery was born – simply brilliant!
The studio consisted of 2 rooms. The first smaller room was used as a storage room and darkroom. The second large room was the actual studio (approx. 50 square meters). The studio height was approx. 4.5 meters. The photo wall as well as the floor area were each 4×4 (LxH / W) meters. All walls were hung with heavy black molton. As soon as you walked in, you got the feeling as if you were diving from the real world into a small, hidden, almost imaginary and self-contained reality. No noise, no distraction, no light – little penetrated from outside. When you stood inside, you felt like you were on the stage of an abandoned theater.
The floor was scratched, dirty, and painted black. There was an old, dusty couch somewhere, a wood stove and an ancient system for the sound. That’s it! No other objects or modern means of communication! An empty, cold and analog room.
One would like to stay here for a while. But as soon as you entered the studio it became clear that longer periods of stay were only possible to a limited extent. The cold was unique. As if death itself welcomed you. In fact, this building was once a slaughterhouse; I always thought the studio had to stay that way! Even if the environment was (almost) hostile to life, many fascinating artistic works were created here. I’ve spent more than ten years of my life there – day and night!
OFFSPACE STUDIO 5133
Ruderstallgassen 4, A-5133 Gilgenberg (Upper Austria)
Austria