![]() ![]() ![]() Pichler's name for these works is misleading: 'prototype' suggests the lead-up to serial production, but these hand-crafted objects are one-offs. The table's title, for Oswald and Ingrid, refers to jazz musician and writer Oswald Wiener and his wife Ingrid, in whose flat many members of the 60s Viennese avant-garde scene met. Another Prototype is a polyester table, an everyday object, with inflatable plastic legs and two indentations in the table-top to take the place of plates. Grosser Raum (Big Space), for example, consists of two plastic covers the larger, spherical one enclosing a small cube with a metallic core containing a fan apparatus. Their formal characteristics range from the rather classical nature of the first brass and aluminium prototypes to the more scientific appearance of the later ones, which are like devices for space research experiments. Made from 1966 to 1969, the eight works are denatured cross-breeds in technoid outfits, with forms borrowed partly from utopian design concepts of the time and partly from a more traditional commodity aesthetic. ![]() ![]() Pichler's 'Prototypes' look like the inspiration for a line from David Bowie's 'Space Oddity' (1969) - 'Take your protein pills and put your helmet on'. Walter Pichler's 'Prototypes' achieved cult status when first shown 30 years ago, but until this exhibition at the Generali Foundation had not been seen since. ![]()
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