RAINER WÖLZL – CONSTELLATIONS

Rainer Wölzl, born in Vienna in 1954, works primarily with the technique of charcoal drawing today. His mostly large-format works are based on art-historical and media-based visual sources. He takes up motifs with contemporary historical and current sociopolitical relevance and transforms them through montage into complex visual constellations in which past and present collide.

The exhibition brings together works from a long-term project developed under the expanded concept of a “Museum of Shadows.” The concept of the shadow functions here as a poetic and political space for reflection—as a trace of the past, as a projection surface, and as a component of both individual and collective memory.

At the heart of Wölzl’s work lies a continuous reflection on power structures, oppression, and their various manifestations in different social contexts. His artistic practice is conceived as a strategy of appropriation and transformation: visual material is not merely cited, but recomposed, shifted, and transferred into an open space of meaning.

Characteristic of Wölzl’s works is their multi-part nature as well as a grid-like structure that creates distance while simultaneously allowing for precise socio-political reflection. In deliberate contrast to the visual overload of digital imagery, the works stand as a testament against historical amnesia and for the enduring power of the drawn image.

The exhibition is the artist’s second museum presentation in Berlin, following his 2002 showing at the Georg Kolbe Museum, where he presented the extensive series “Aesthetics of Resistance” on Peter Weiss.

On Friday, June 5, Rainer Wölzl will be available for a guided tour of the exhibition from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. by appointment.