Rudolf Polanszky (born 1951 in Vienna) lives and works in Vienna. His works have been exhibited in international institutions and private collections such as the Rubell Family Collection in Miami, Florida; the Rudin DeWoody Collection in West Palm Beach, Florida; Belvedere 21; Kunsthalle Wien; the Bank Austria Kunstforum Wien; the Lower Austrian State Museum; the NMNM – Nouveau Musée National de Monaco; the Malmö Konsthall in Sweden; Centre Pompidou, Paris; and at the Venice Biennale. In 2018, the artist presented a major retrospective titled Eidola at the Secession. In 2013, he was awarded the Honorary Prize of the State of Lower Austria. Since the mid-1970s, Rudolf Polanszky has been developing a multifaceted, cross-media body of work that encompasses conceptual film, video, and photographic works, as well as drawings, paintings, sculptural objects, and assemblages. A defining feature of his work is the deliberate yet methodical incorporation of chance. Among the central materials of his work are Plexiglas, metal, mirrors, synthetic resin, wire, and foam. In the process of artistic transformation, these materials are systematically stripped of their original functionality and purpose and placed in new contexts. Polanszky’s working method is based on a non-linear, process-oriented approach that he himself describes as “ad-hoc synthesis”: a process of spontaneously yet structurally assembling heterogeneous materials and found forms. Through superimposition, layering, overlapping, interlocking, and folding, complex structures emerge that elude a clear formal or semantic meaning and instead become legible within the tension between materiality, chance, and deliberate arrangement.
The exhibition brings together sculptures, assemblages, and paintings from recent years, as well as video works dating back to the 1970s. Daidalon refers to the Greek myth of the inventor and artist Daedalus, father of Icarus, and to Icarus’s tragic decision to fly using his father’s artificial wings. He flew too close to the sun; his wings, held together with wax, failed, and he plummeted to his death. (Rudolf Polanszky)
