Hubert Scheibl
Seeds of Time

Seeds of Time is the title under which the ALBERTINA Museum is presenting a selection of new works by Hubert Scheibl, most of which were created while ensconced in the isolation of the pandemic. Questions about life and death, about nature with its mutations and the evolution of life’s smallest building blocks, of cells, viruses, and bacteria, have become acutely relevant amidst these novel circumstances. The pandemic has unhinged our world: in a way that is impressive and universally palpable, a virus has proven how time and space are really quite relative in the face of elemental threats. Accustomed points of reference shift and require redefinition. And the past, present, and future condense into an ephemeral moment captured in a painting that negates the linear continuity of time. Coincidence and the uncontrollable are front and center, here—as is also the case in Scheibl’s art.
 

Art between Coincidence and Calculation

This exhibition’s three rooms are devoted to special phenomena in Scheibl’s art: in the first room, square-shaped paintings that seem nearly monochrome interact with one another. These works of art, consisting of numerous painted layers, combine to manifest a fascinating overall color tone consisting of multiple unique coloristic chords.

Scheibl’s series do not arise within clearly defined periods of time. Instead, the artist calls upon formats, ideas, and techniques from the past whenever new impulses emerge. It is thus that, in the second room, the coloristically subtle background of Ones permits just as little ex post facto alteration as do the new works entitled My Private B. Onto an atmospherically complex background, the brushstrokes—guided by impulses and maximum concentration—dynamically and indelibly transfer bodily motions onto the picture, imbuing it with space and shape.

The third room makes a theme of the alternating processes of scratching out lines and trails on paintings and applying lines to white paper when drawing. The abstract, impulsively created linear structures that result recall real-life shapes from nature such as grasses, branches, or forests.
 

The Exploration of Extremes

Hubert Scheibl’s artistic universe presents a kaleidoscope of diversity and coexistences, with his art embodying a permanent experiment that seeks to unite opposites. His central form of expression is painting, to which music, film, sculpture, drawing, literature, philosophy, and science all contribute.

Hubert Scheibl (*1952) has for decades featured prominently among Austria’s internationally renowned artists, and the ALBERTINA Museum numbers among those institutions where he is represented by masterpieces from various creative periods. Works from his oeuvre can be seen regularly in exhibitions drawn from the permanent collection.

The exhibition is on view from 31 August until 5 December 2021.