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Michael Höpfner - Plateau - A Walking Life, 2024 - Hotel Ladinia, Ortisei

Michael Höpfner, Plateau - A Walking Life, 2024. Installation - Silver Gelatine Prints, Drawings, Collages, Yarn. Variable Dimensions. Commissioned by Biennale Gherdëina 9. Supported by La Boîte, Tunis. Photo by Tiberio Sorvillo

Michael Höpfner’s artistic research consists of analogue black-and-white photographs, drawings, installations and sculptures that tell the story of his long journeys on foot across the remotest parts of the world, especially in Eastern Europe, China and Asia. Equipped with an analogue Hasselblad camera, Höpfner traverses unspoilt natural locations, far away from or abandoned by civilisation, viewing walking as an artistic process in search of the qualities of existence in this austere and modest world. The starting point for this journey was the long period he spent on the Tibetan plateau at an altitude of over 4,500 metres between 2000 and 2008. In an existential quest, his artistic work is closely bound up in his encounters with shepherds and nomads and his immersion in their way of life. As a walker, Höpfner is mindful of the ground beneath his feet and how different worlds are revealed to him little by little. His photographs thus become a means for observing and processing vastness, emptiness and solitude both in detail and at a distance.

For The Parliament of Marmots, Michael Höpfner explored the mythological, geological and philosophical dimensions of the Fanes Plateau in the heart of the Dolomites Nature Park, where the ancient people allied with marmots are said to have lived. Starting from the notion of the plateau as a rhizomatic structure and as a “continuous, self-oscillating region of intensity,” as described by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus (1980), Höpfner developed a new anthological work for the rooms of the historic Hotel Ladinia in Ortisei. Alongside the various excursions in Val Gardena, the artist also travelled through the Djebel Serj in the Tunisian Atlas mountains. He thus collected new material and at the same time immersed himself in the thousands of negatives and hundreds of notebooks recounting his journeys to the high plateaus, as well as his encounters with pastoral and nomadic populations over the last twenty-five years. (S.G.)

MICHAEL HÖPFNER

Michael Höpfner (1972, Krems/Donau, Austria) is a walking artist based in Vienna. His work reflects on the landscape starting from solitary walking trips that can take weeks or months. Over the years his walks often merged into life-time projects. He started as a student in Europe and Middle East and since 1997 he has walked through Western China, the Tibet Autonomous Region of China and Qinghai, Tajikistan, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Nepal, South Korea as well as in the mountains of the alpine arch. His work has been exhibited in institutions such as MAN, Nuoro; Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt; Kunsthaus, Graz; Center for Contemporary Art, Sarajevo; Klovicevi Dvori Gallery, Zagreb; Kunsthalle St. Gallen; Siena Art Institute; MUAC, Mexico City; Kunstverein, Salzburg; Ar/Ge Kunst, Bolzano; Kunstraum Noe, Vienna; Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern.

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Michael Höpfner - Plateau - A Walking Life, 2024 - Hotel Ladinia, Ortisei

Michael Höpfner, Plateau - A Walking Life, 2024. Installation - Silver Gelatine Prints, Drawings, Collages, Yarn. Variable Dimensions. Commissioned by Biennale Gherdëina 9. Supported by La Boîte, Tunis. Photo by Tiberio Sorvillo

Michael Höpfner’s artistic research consists of analogue black-and-white photographs, drawings, installations and sculptures that tell the story of his long journeys on foot across the remotest parts of the world, especially in Eastern Europe, China and Asia. Equipped with an analogue Hasselblad camera, Höpfner traverses unspoilt natural locations, far away from or abandoned by civilisation, viewing walking as an artistic process in search of the qualities of existence in this austere and modest world. The starting point for this journey was the long period he spent on the Tibetan plateau at an altitude of over 4,500 metres between 2000 and 2008. In an existential quest, his artistic work is closely bound up in his encounters with shepherds and nomads and his immersion in their way of life. As a walker, Höpfner is mindful of the ground beneath his feet and how different worlds are revealed to him little by little. His photographs thus become a means for observing and processing vastness, emptiness and solitude both in detail and at a distance.

For The Parliament of Marmots, Michael Höpfner explored the mythological, geological and philosophical dimensions of the Fanes Plateau in the heart of the Dolomites Nature Park, where the ancient people allied with marmots are said to have lived. Starting from the notion of the plateau as a rhizomatic structure and as a “continuous, self-oscillating region of intensity,” as described by George Deleuze and Félix Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus (1980), Höpfner developed a new anthological work for the rooms of the historic Hotel Ladinia in Ortisei. Alongside the various excursions in Val Gardena, the artist also travelled through the Djebel Serj in the Tunisian Atlas mountains. He thus collected new material and at the same time immersed himself in the thousands of negatives and hundreds of notebooks recounting his journeys to the high plateaus, as well as his encounters with pastoral and nomadic populations over the last twenty-five years. (S.G.)

MICHAEL HÖPFNER

Michael Höpfner (1972, Krems/Donau, Austria) is a walking artist based in Vienna. His work reflects on the landscape starting from solitary walking trips that can take weeks or months. Over the years his walks often merged into life-time projects. He started as a student in Europe and Middle East and since 1997 he has walked through Western China, the Tibet Autonomous Region of China and Qinghai, Tajikistan, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Nepal, South Korea as well as in the mountains of the alpine arch. His work has been exhibited in institutions such as MAN, Nuoro; Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt; Kunsthaus, Graz; Center for Contemporary Art, Sarajevo; Klovicevi Dvori Gallery, Zagreb; Kunsthalle St. Gallen; Siena Art Institute; MUAC, Mexico City; Kunstverein, Salzburg; Ar/Ge Kunst, Bolzano; Kunstraum Noe, Vienna; Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern.