Heinz Cibulka

http://www.h-cibulka.com

("Right from the beginning, since I had been a student at the Training College for Photography and Graphic Design, I have been dreaming of shaping my life by artistic activities – and that's what I have been striving for later in life." (H.C. "Material Bild", Vienna 1993, p. 20). With these words Heinz Cibulka introduces a detailed account of his life and work as an artist in the catalogue "Bild Material", published in 1993 by the State Museum of Lower Austria. This catalogue and the related exhibition provide deep insights in Cibulka's artistic work. His quest for form, for meaningful ways of structuring his works (something which in the past might have been referred to as harmony or correspondence) took ten years' time in which he experimented with numerous artistic approaches, dealing inter alia with actionism and Peter Kubelka's cinematic work. As is often the case, his personal acquaintance and, finally, cooperation with these artists was of decisive importance for his own development. The performance of "Stammersdorf" at forum stadtpark in Graz in 1972 was his first opportunity to formulate the basic elements of his artistic work: his contribution consisted of a photo frieze of individual black and white photographs along the walls of the gallery, constructing a scene from a wine inn in the exhibition space and featuring typical meals offered at such an inn. Transcripts of typical conversations were laid out on the tables. Integrated features of this spatial design were, to some extent, the preparing of meals as well as and deliberate celebration with the effect that each visitor became a part of the celebration and thus of the artistic work itself.

In order to understand Heinz Cibulka's photographic work, it is essential to be aware of this comprehensive artistic claim, since the integration of the "dream of a synthesis of the arts" is a repeated feature in his works, as Edith Almhofer has quite rightly observed (H.C. "aus nachbars garten", year of publication unknown). Actions, performances, objects and object images, lyrical and conceptual texts, films and photographic shows with soundtracks, collections of materials and texts and, of course, photo cycles are the essential forms of presentation Heinz Cibulka chooses for his work. For a long time, he considered photography itself to be lacking sensuousness, since the technical, haptic relation to the world is of substantial importance to him. Again and again he engages in a "struggle against mental picture-taking, against insubstantial expression" (H.C. "Material Bild", Vienna 1993, p. 43). Heinz Cibulka shares this aim with the actionists who, like him, endeavour to overcome the panel in favour of a process-like way of exercising art vis-à-vis life. In his Viennese diaries, Günter Brus says about the claims on artistic form that "[...it should] virtually resolve the image and elevate it to the level of being a clip of the world – but this world should, how can I say, it should contain set signals, rhythmics, screaming, sleep, bean soup, the dachshund, the typhoon, the endless melody, etc. etc." (quoted from Dieter Schwarz "Aktionsmalerei – Aktionismus. Wien 1960-1965", Zurich 1988, p. 22).

Looking at the way Heinz Cibulka's conception of art developed, it becomes clear that his artistic work has been entering the observer’s awareness in ever-changing ways. Symbolically, we could say that the place where his pictures became concrete has repeatedly been shifted. In earlier actions and performances the observers themselves, guided by the artist’s instruction, had to create the image in their own minds. Quite frequently, the viewer was part of the work of art. Through the use of photography, Cibulka's imagery-based works reached a higher degree of abstraction. His photo compositions were, in fact, instructions for perception given by the artist. In numerous publications (such as "Nationalpark Hohe Tauern" or "Weinviertler Bilder - Setzkasten") Cibulka repeatedly referred to this grammar of images and to the art of reading them. In his digital collages, the photographer uses the computer to generate the individual elements, presenting them to the audience as a dense fabric of images. These works clearly show the hand-writing of Heinz Cibulka who thus, once again, presents a panel based on an extremely consistent and comprehensive artistic design.

The development of Heinz Cibulka’s work could also be described as an attempt to integrate larger and larger, and ever more disparate, parts of reality into his work. In his digital collages he is now able to seamlessly incorporate any possible visual event and yet attain the most coherent way of representation his work has ever encountered.

Extract from
"The Genesis of the Image" of Kurt Kaindl