Different - 2

Helfried Hagenberg is one of the few artists who have experienced making sculpture with paper. This is a completely different experience from whatever we have known before. 
A while ago, I read a news in AGI website about the publication of Helfried Hagenberg’s book Book Sculptures and saw some of its very interesting images. I shared this piece of news online as I normally do with tens of others news, tweets and daily posts. Uwe Loesch, however, attracted my attention to his works again by reminding the publication of the book in Germany and the news of an exhibition of these works. Then I saw the book and was astonished with the beauty and difference of his works. Hagenberg’s sculpture is something between notation and construction and represents a collection of various types of sculptures. 
Since the seventies, the book has played an increasingly important role as an artistic medium. Helfried Hagenberg was one of the first artists who worked with paper in sculptural context. His conceptual works retain the essential form of book while at the same time taking it to different dimensions beyond the everyday use of book form. In these types of works, he reflects the interplay between form and content considering his work as an eternal search that takes place between vision and meaning. With extremely delicate techniques and mathematical precision, he creates his sculptures in a three-dimensional form that portray the nature of the book. Containing various groups of works, sculptures, and collages, this collection shows not only a different side of the book but also recreates a new visual spirit in the truest sense of the word. His sculptures are an infinite search of vision and feeling. 
The concept of book finds a new meaning in the look of graphic designers of the seventies. This new meaning transforms it into a new art medium, redefines it and converts it into artistic expression.

The book is still the book, i.e. a number of pages sewn together in European standard sizes of paper and bound with a cloth binder to hard covers. In this revised definition does not consider book merely as a vehicle for conveying written concept. It has now changed position and is viewed as a tool for artistic expression. The initial idea behind these sculptures came from the multiple folding or Psaligraphic which were practiced in traditional arts common in some European countries such as Denmark, Switzerland and Germany. On the one hand, Hagenberg has expanded the book sculptures by folding and cutting the paper and creating unique three-dimensional forms inside the book pages based on precise geometrical calculations. On the other hand, he experiments a different test by abrasion, scissoring, scratching and distorting the paper texture. The size and volume of each book provides further clues to understanding these internal sculptures. For example, in the spiral shape, the exhibition of depth, width, length and time changes from page to page and from book to book. This means that not only the opened book and the facing pages and cut forms are significant, but even the turning of pages which cause transformation is also important. 
This process is well depicted in Logical Scandal (Der Logische Skandal). This collection includes nine books bound in 21cm. x 30 cm. and in 192 pages (96 sheets). These sculptures are created based on spiral movement with 3:4:5 Pythagorean Theorem. Sculptures are not fully visible. Like always, they are an imaginary space. In the Magic Rectangle (Magisches Rechteck), each page includes a grade and on the intersection of 4-unit (width) in 5-unit (length) divisions, small and large size holes are created. The size of these holes alternately changes and by this replacement they create three-dimensional spaces of various depths.
In his other book The N Elements (Die X Elemente)– the ancient Greek classical theory of fundamental elements, Hagenberg does not create sculpture in book form. Instead, he reflects creative and colorful experiences in relation with nature and natural elements, i.e. fire, soil, air and water and their various effects. Concepts such as wear, light, spiral, fire, ash, cut, water, sludge and so on are titles of these books created based on the effect of natural elements on paper; the essence of their being and their influence on life and nature. Emphasis on the colors and existence of different materials and their effects, creates a visual symphony for the visual display of nature’s music before the eye of the viewer. 

* Helfried Hagenberg, Book Sculptures - Buchskulpturen, Edited by Wolfgang Wittrock, With Essays by Martina Dobbe and Helfried Hagenberg, Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2012, ISBN 978-3-7757-3187-4