Portal with two wings 2023 collaborative Project A M Rossell and Alois Junek
I have been a fan of the work of my colleague Alois Junek for some time, and we often talked about working together. That this collaboration came into being, is because of necessity; a stipulation of working closely together on another project called Mir (Slavic for Peace), in a medieval Dungeon in Upper Austria, which, due to the difficulties of space, time, and different creative processes, between Alois and I, eventually led me to sacrifice a much larger work, break it up, and offer it up to Alois Junek's abstraction. Without these ‘chains’ of time and conflicting modus operandi this wonderful work would never have happened, for I would normally never paint my works so! Nor would I prefer such angular forms. Nor could Alois have realised his long-held dream to work 3D with his computer images. Naturally both of us have had to allow the other to intrude: if Alois were to have realized his paintings directly in 3D we would not have had the poetry of the winged forms that I have contributed, nor would we have had the dynamic of his facetstes speaking in terms of Death and of Power: For Dürer’s watercolor is of an amputated bird’s wing, which, with Junek’s abstraction, develops a downward thrust and tension.
These two wings are taken and reworked from a large work, a “ Prison wall/ portal” sculpture, and in doing so they have become, for the present, standalone works. they were always intended to be ‘Wings’; symbolic of the yearning for freedom The whole work was to present/ radiate the “being” of a prison, of Incarceration: all that the Prison cell and corridor might experience from suffering and yearning, from power and Abuse, from those on the outside looking in, and those inside who are denied this basic freedom of looking. The missing middle piece, i.e. Door or Portal will be later reincorporated is fortuitously echoed in the actual background of the exhibiting space! The two Monoliths are Somewhat anthropomorphic: They have an angular flaring from the ground upwards. They are fine and “feathered” at their tips, but sweep upwards, monolithic, angular and cubic. There is something quintessentially Human in them: Both anchored on the earth, but also upright, striving/ seeking upwards, to the heavens, towards the spirit.
On the far wall to be seen between the Wings, is Junek's two-dimensional work; an abstraction of Dürer's famous watercolour of a Blue Roller's Wing and references the design painted on the two Winged 'Portal' The second painting in landscape format with more saturated red colour is of the well-known Voith villa in St Pölten.
In his paintings, Junek has specialized in developing a world that is derived from nature, but, however, represents life in sharp clinical facets and juxtapositions of color. I have always seen these works as the ultimate development of his graphic design orientation and have a deep affinity with them.
Several years ago, he did large paintings based on pixelated images where he would combine several pixels of the same light and tone and undertake small ‘operations’ of breathing life into them so that curves would replace the blocks of the pixels in special moments not at first observable. But Increasingly Junek has sought to create a language not of approximation but of new power, where the form jumps out and then recedes. This is interesting because Junek is very controlled; he works in half tones and quarter tones and every color is precisely calibrated and premixed, but with his paintings he does not seek to render what we see, but what we might feel.
Albrecht Dürer Blaurackenflügel/ wing of a European Roller Aquarell 1512
Copyright Albertina Vienna
Alois Junek Abstraction from “Blaurackenflügel” / wing of a European Roller Albrecht Dürer 1512
Right at the start of the first Project in Haslach Upper Austria Alois and I settled on the motive of an upward wing in response to the downward wing of Death. The Wing is an object of deep envy; for we do not have it and thus earthbound here, must we live, but from the Mythology of Icarus and Daedalus onwards the human has sought to reach both in fantasy and in material forms of invention beyond his or her gravity bound body to the sky, in aspiration perhaps, to the heavenly spheres.
A.M. Rossell Nike 1995 circa 1,45m cast concrete from the modeled and carved original plaster version 1994
AM.Rossell Rushpool 2003 mixed media, bodycast, dove, polyester, chopstrand fiberglass
Mark Rossell October 2023