Michael Höpfner: Plateau

Michael Höpfner
Plateau
Opening: Wed 13.11.2024, 18h
14.11. – 31.05.2025 | Sternenpassage

The main theme of the artist Michael Höpfner can be summarised in the sentence "I can only see the world on foot". Over the past thirty years, he has travelled on foot through mountain and steppe landscapes in Europe, Asia and Africa and processed these impressions in his black and white photographs, drawings and installations. Scales and distances often remain unclear, as does the nature of the landscapes. Höpfner's photographs open up a view of a world that remains hidden to most of us - a world that could just as easily have sprung from a distant planet.

Excerpt of the Lumen Zine Magazine #13:

9/12/2012 day five in Chang Tang
4,900 meters altitude / The horizon’s bend
is visible / or am I imagining this /
The tundra’s ground is soft, sometimes
I sink to my ankles and must pull my
foot from the soft sand / I only look at my
steps and the ground’s surface in front
of me / lichens, stones, tiny flies, sand,
plants, everything snuggles up to the
ground’s surface to dodge the storms, the
snow, the ice /
By looking at the ground I see the stars /
The surface of the Chang Tang is riddled
with tributaries and small lakes; all is
marshland / unfathomable silence and
solitude / I talk to the stones / last night
everything disappeared in the starry sky /

Michael Höpfner (born 1972) studied graphic art and painting at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna and fine art photography at the Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow.

Plateau, 2007/2024 © Michael Höpfner, Courtesy: Galerie Hubert Winter, Wien and Galleria Michael Rizzo, Venedig