How Time Goes
Künstler/in
Josef Strau
(geb. 1957 in Wien)
Date2023
ClassificationsMalerei
Medium Acryl, Bleistift, Schwefel, in Metall gefasste Mineralien mit Magneten auf Leinen
Dimensions30 x 40 x 6 cm
Credit LineArtothek des Bundes
Object number28582
DescriptionThis work was part of a one-time experiment titled Hypostasicisms, aimed at engaging Neoplatonic metaphysics and exploring practical applications of its idealistic discourses—particularly in understanding universal forces, distinct spheres, spiritual movements, and temporal separations, while focusing on the “here and now” during creative processes.The production was also an attempt to re-appropriate earlier procedures and repeat their exercises, hopefully rectifying them: drawings of yellow light, burning soft metal, and coating it on found trash like bonbon chocolate box trays. The exercises were limited in time, often basic and purely chemical—burning and extinguishing metals like tin or lead, or sulfuring and connecting them to canvases or found objects using fire only, without glue, or by magnetizing them and joining them with particular stones. Always in dedication to the advice of Plotinus—the idea that while elaborating the most simple material experiments, vast thoughts might descend through inspiration, as if performing the universe’s central force of Hypostasis, where inspiration enters the sphere of simple material movements.
Plotinus' pleasure lies in the attraction to the unclear—the not fully understood. The things and thoughts that are hard to discover often seem more attractive than the consistent ones, giving off more light. Perhaps this pleasure stems from a liberation from intellectual imprisonment.
It is about putting oneself in a position of self-refusal—to not become a mere instrument of thought, but to trust that thought will emanate by its own power. To become hypostatic as a cultural producer willing to withdraw from prefigured assumptions—not from nihilism (though at times including it), but to emanate thought, even metaphysically—revealing why sometimes using “stupid” things can be more intellectually demanding than conventional artistic production.
Gekürzter Text: Josef Strau und Artothek des Bundes
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