Helmut Grill was born on April 29, 1965 in Salzburg/Austria. He now lives and works in Vienna. Since 1991 Helmut fully devotes his time to the arts, leaving behind his previous profession as a digital manipulator of advertising visuals. Quickly understanding that a wide horizon inspires his work he started to explore different urban environments.

Over the last 21 years he has learned a Lot about his individual, conscious and subconscious approaches to values and emotions that influence his thinking. These conclusions about his inner priorities, threats to his ideals and anxieties have pushed him to search for ways to express the conflict of imminence and protection.

It started with natural rubber and attempted to compress it between metal pieces. Ultimately the seemingly soft rubber would succeed over the predominant metal and altered its shape. From there he started to coat valuable, random or frightening items with liquid rubber to either eliminate the danger, change the meaning or protect the vulnerable. An online-based opportunity for visitors to remotely initiate a coating session marked my first step towards interactive art projects.

His search continued on to photographic media choosing almost random images from the web. He then digitally enhanced them and put them into different environments, looking for controversy of beauty and war or harmony and destruction, adding an additional layer by partially coating the peoples skin with writings.

The writings are subconscious without Literal meaning or poetry. Helmut tried to channel possible thoughts of people in pictures on to their skin without deliberately editing the meaning. They symbolize a different awkward threat we have to deal with everyday in form of media and information overflow. At same time the visually appealing coat of letters rather wraps the individuals into my personal armor of words.

Helmut's photographic exploration of invasion continued with digitally altering graphic relations in interpersonal situations, increasing or decreasing the size of the aggressor versus the defender.

Still partially unsatisfied with only 2 dimensional solution of photography, he started to look into video installations, initially expressing my ideas in a simplistic/minimalist, but very meaningful way. This is how he came up with the project Rocket Fish. A little fish symbolizing men's everlasting strive to rise above the ordinary The stubborn aim to achieve the seemingly impossible. Endless attempts without reason or eventually the only path to transcendence?

The next project was called The Refuge. A concept based on the fascination of secrecy. The lack of people is part of creating the seclusion. Any reflection and correlation with humanity purely originates from the play with what has been left behind or the meaningful placement of elements seemingly added over the course of time. The house (home, hotel, refuge,...) itself, neon signs, strange wild postings, drawings or graffiti and the environment are all lit intentionally in obscure ways to create the specific atmosphere Helmut desires.

Following this concept are the sceneries, which he is working on at the moment. Virtual landscapes waiting for a discoverer. Above all it is the secrecy and the Limitation of obvious information, which should inspire to go for journey into a mysterious world.

Olyvia Fine Art
17 Ryder Street, St.James's
London SW1Y 6PY United Kingdom
Ph. +44 (0)20 79252986

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