Karl Heinz Koller (capella)

Karl Heinz Koller was born 1943 in Oetz/Tyrol as the son of the district doctor Dr. Karl Koller and Anna Maria Koller and died 1995 in Vienna, Austria. He studied Psychology and Ethnology and made his master’s degree in Graphic Arts at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna. He lived and worked as independent industry and art photographer, filmer and video artist in Vienna.

KH Koller’s photographic works, "individuated complexes" (1976–1995), are photographic operations using a wide variety of geometric and abstract parameters realised with analogue Hasselblad cameras.

Biography

Austrian artist Karl Heinz Koller (1943–1995) left behind a versatile and multi-faceted body of work. His early works are black and white photographs and cinematic documents. At the beginning of the 1970s he took a series of black and white-photographs in youth centres across Europe in which he captured the spirit of a new era spurred by the 1968 student movements. For the highly dynamic Body Art Series (1973/74) Koller’s artist friends Johann Jascha and Bruno Demattio performed in exaggerated, expressive poses in front of the camera. These works build a strong contrast with the frontal Monumental Portraits-series. Koller took around the same time with Hasselblad-cameras.

The Photographic Configurations, made between 1972 and 1975, are the result of the artist’s philosophic and technical research, reflection and effort. Those photographs bear the aesthetic of a perfectly generated digital image, still, all those photographs have been taken with analogue Hasselblad cameras. The Configurations clearly demonstrate Koller’s identity and concerns as artist, scientist and inventor at the same time. The One Month In My Life photo diary, which documents every hour of the artist’s life with a photo, concludes his black and white-period.

From 1975 on, Koller’s work evolves from black and white to colour imagery. He considered himself not only as a photographer, but rather an "image generator". He termed the elaborate and time-consuming still photography in the Tableaux series (1976–95) as "individuated complexes", moving fluidly across a wide variety of geometric and abstract parameters. The Mandala colour photographs, as the earlier black and white photographs, seem to be digitally generated, yet are also painstakingly produced exclusively with analogue Hasselblad cameras. All of Koller’s works are body of proof for his outstanding talent and self-conception as artist, scientist and inventor.

In 1988 Koller started an ongoing work in progress: 39 notebooks, a compilation of the artist’s intricate musings, that reveal intimate philosophical reflections, literary text fragments, song texts, word plays, photos, drawings, sketches and images, even comics, alongside clippings from newspapers and plans for future projects. These highly personal notebook-collages offer a rare insight into the artist’s world of thoughts, his inspirations, concerns, his hopes and fears as well as his visual depiction.

Additionally, nine experimental films, to a certain part the continuation of the Photographic Configurations, have been realised with analogue cameras. The films complete Koller’s stunning oeuvre and demonstrate his cross-linked approach in his intellectual world as well as in his artistic output.

In a 1981 introductory essay to the catalogue for the "Extended Photography" exhibition, Austrian media artist and theoretician Peter Weibel summarized the status quo of photography at that time: "During the last 15 years a development has taken place in photography which in its radicality is comparable to that of the 1920’s. The expression ‘extended photography’ is appropriate for this development […] because of its exposing the possibilities and mechanisms inherent in photography. […] Art history of photography appears to be a constant development characterized by the creative use of formalisms hidden in the medium of photography, an externalization and visualization of the intrinsic qualities of the photographic calculus […]". [1]

Generative photographs by photographer and filmmaker Karl Heinz Koller were among the works shown at the 1981 group exhibition at the Vienna Secession that Peter Weibel and Anna Auer had curated. Although born in Ötz, Tyrol, Koller had spent his entire career in Vienna until his death in 1995, Koller had worked on analogue experimental photography film and videos. [2]

In the mid-seventies, Koller had begun to experiment with clever techniques and processes in the dark room. He used a rotating table that he had built to take rather unlikely everyday materials like sand, dust, blossoms, leaves, and feathers to add ornaments and immaterial points of light in rotation, taking the shots with a Hasselblad medium-format camera. Until his death in 1995, Koller had worked on these archetypal, circular forms that often reference Buddhist mandalas and which in their basic concept may have appeared similar, although they were quite different when viewed in detail.

Over a period of twenty years, he created an archive of ca. 3000 individual experimental configurations photography which represent technically brilliant masterworks of analogue photography. They were also the starting point for Koller’s films and larger compositions like the "NEIRICA I-IV" installation. This newly acquired work can initially be seen as a summative statement of Koller’s intensive investigations into how photography creates shapes. It also reflects Koller’s spiritual consciousness and his interest in science and highly aesthetic symbiosis of the macro- and the microcosmos.

"These processes reveal themselves to the viewer depending on his individual mythology and world view as representations of star systems or microbiological structures, as the insides of matter or energy fields, or the sucking of black holes in the Universe as relay stations and thresholds to other worlds."

Exhibitions Selected

"Undefined photography" 1969 - 1974

"Undefined photography" 1969 - 1974
© Steven Koller

Body Art Sequences 1972 - 1975 / JASCHA / Performer Painter / A Sequences "Schöner Wohnen"

Body Art Sequences 1972 - 1975
JASCHA / Performer Painter / A Sequences "Schöner Wohnen"
© Steven Koller

Body Art Sequences 1972 - 1975 / BRUNO DEMATTIO / Ibiza / London / German Performer and Painter / 600 images

Body Art Sequences 1972 - 1975
BRUNO DEMATTIO / Ibiza / London / German Performer and Painter / 600 images
© Steven Koller

Monumental 1973

Monumental 1973
© Steven Koller

One month in my life photo-diary 1975 / 550 images

One month in my life photo-diary 1975 / 550 images
© Steven Koller

Analogue Experimentelle Photography 1975 - 1995

Analogue Experimentelle Photography 1975 - 1995
Configurations
© Steven Koller

Bibliography

Audio-Visual Work Presentation

Film & Video / Analogue

Collaboration on the following film productions

Publications

Publications about Koller’s Work

Awards

Memberships

References

  1. ^ Weibel, Peter; Auer, Anna (1981). Erweiterte Fotografie - Extended Photography. Teil 1. Vienna: Secession. p. 11.
  2. ^ Painitz, Hermann J. (1983). Freiplatz Kunst '83. Künstler Arbeiten in der Wiener Secession 13. Jänner - 6. Februar 1983. Vienna: Secession. p. 54.
  3. ^ "The 1970s: The expansion of Viennese art".
  4. ^ "The 1980s. Pluralism on the cusp of the information age".
  5. ^ "Spacetime Diagrams 1/2".
  6. ^ Koschatzky, Walter (1989). Die Kunst der Photographie : Technik, Geschichte, Meisterwerke. Herrsching: Ed. Atlantis. ISBN 3-88199-516-1. OCLC 159894665.
  7. ^ Dertnig, Christiane (1994). Vanilla : ein Lokal und seine Zeit : Wien 1970-1974. Lorenz Gallmetzer. Wien: Picus. ISBN 3-85452-123-5. OCLC 33869419.
  8. ^ "Scientific Processing. Karl Heinz Koller - Avantgardefotografie in Wien nach 1960"
  9. ^ Oliver Rathkolb, Klaus-Dieter Mulley (2013). Theodor-Körner-Fonds : Preisträger/innen 1954-2013. Wien: ÖGB Verlag. p. 171. ISBN 978-3-7035-1546-0. OCLC 859139076.