Walter Pichler

Walter Pichler created paintings, objects, installations, and architectural works, engaging intensively with space and its individual perception. The starting point for his work was always the drawing, which served both to conceptualize his sculptures and to provide a counterpoint to their precise execution.

Walter Pichler and Oswald Wiener shared a close friendship and artistic bond. Both were part of the ​“Englische Flotte” (English Fleet group) within the Viennese avant-garde of the 1960s, which explored visionary architectural and utopian concepts. In the novel die verbesserung von mitteleuropa, roman (the improvement of central europe, a novel), Wiener dedicated the appendix ​“notizen zum konzept des bio-adapters” (Notes on the Concept of the Bio-Adapter) to Pichler. In it, he describes a technical installation that completely surrounds humans with an artificial environment, so that the boundary between organism and environment is increasingly dissolved. In this context, he designed — in part together with Hans Hollein — utopian urban models and objects at the intersection of art and architecture.

On display are a series of photographs and drawings of Pichler’s TV-Helm (TV Helmet), which is part of a group of works known as Prototypen (Prototypes), created between 1966 and 1969. These prosthetic-looking works draw on aesthetic influences from the aerospace, automotive, and military industries and utilize materials such as plastic, aluminum, and pneumatic elements. The TV Helmet, also called Das tragbare Wohnzimmer (The Portable Living Room) by Pichler, can be understood as a technological extension of the human head and, at the same time, as a device for media isolation. Photographs show how the person is visually shielded from the outside world and concentrates entirely on the television image integrated into the helmet. In the sculpture Apparat (Prototyp 1) (Apparatus [Prototype 1]), these ideas are expanded into an almost life-size sculpture, bringing into focus the role of vision and its entanglement with thought through a viewing device. This is also depicted in the photograph Apparat (Prototyp 1) (Apparatus [Prototype 1]), where, encased in plaster, it resembles a prosthetic device.

In his works, Walter Pichler thus explores the tension between human and machine, apparatus and environment. Decades before the development of virtual reality technologies, he not only anticipates an expansion of media-mediated spaces of perception but also formulates a critical reflection on the isolation of the human being in the age of media consumption.

Apparat (Prototyp 1), 1966
Aluminum, chrome-plated brass
136 × 55 x 50 cm

Apparat (Prototyp 1) Detail, 1966
Silver gelatin print, vintage
31 × 24 cm, framed

Prototyp 1, 1966
Mixed media on paper
26 × 23 cm,framed

TV Helmet, 1967
Mixed media on paper
29 × 20,5 cm, framed

Kleiner Raum (Prototyp 4), 1967
Silver gelatin print
40 × 30 cm, framed 85 x 61 cm

TV-Helm (Tragbares Wohnzimmer), 1967/2022
Silver gelatin print
116 × 112 cm, ramed

All works Courtesy Galerie Krinzinger and Nachlass Walter Pichler, Vienna