Hubert Kostner
∗1971, Italy
lives and works in Castelrotto, Italy
In his sculptural works and installations, his actions and interventions in public space, Hubert Kostner deals ironically and enigmatically with the occupation and consequent appropriation of spaces, especially natural spaces and their architectural and topographical appropriation. The artist is a keen observer of touristically developed areas in the Alps and their clichéd perception; he examines the effects of mass tourism and the leisure industry in a nature made user-friendly by infrastructural interventions. Natural landscapes are conquered and territorially appropriated; instead of a romantic, sublime view of nature, the view of a medialised and easily consumable landscape takes its place. Kostner's artworks enable surprising changes of perspective through contextual shifts and alienations of size and dimension. Parodistic allusions do not make his works appear too serious, but precisely for this reason they never fail to have an effect. In his mostly small-format sculptures and paintings, Hubert Kostner takes landscape observations of his immediate surroundings as a starting point and alienates them in model-like experimental arrangements. In his actions and works in public space, Kostner consistently reacts to site-specific conditions. Kostner's installation consists of a dozen pulleys from a lift system, which are threaded onto vertical poles and fixed to two existing trees via wooden beams. The work blends wonderfully into its surroundings, acting as a demarcation between the pedestrian zone and the street behind it, with the cable car to the Alpe di Siusi visible in the background. The lift wheels are painted gold on the inside. Kostner asks visitors to turn them and make a wish. In this way, the artist makes us aware of the aesthetics of a commodity, the lift wheels become a sculpture with a participatory moment. In a mixture of lift system, Tibetan prayer wheel and playground equipment, Kostner explores the boundaries of the concept of sculpture; by shifting the context, he questions the function and form of the lift wheels and irritates us with their newly assigned function.
