Adi Holzer 2019

QUESTIONS PERTAINING TO THE   MEANING OF LIFE

Permanent “Looking” helps us navigating the processes of self-awareness and the search for the inner self  leading up to the questions pertaining to the meaning of life.

In all his work Adi Holzer has always accepted this considerable challenge.

Even if the oeuvre repeatedly manifests an “effortlessness of the learned”, it is only the true seeker who can escape the condition of the dark worlds. The artist Adi Holzer shows in his cycles “Mirror of Life” and “All My Sources” a symbiosis of images from his own life with portraits of companions who have contributed to shape his artistic work.  Those form now a diary of his artistic production.

The last image of this cycle, in which Gustav Mahler’s “The Farewell”, the last song form the symphony for tenor, alto and orchestra, The Song of the Earth, becomes  “The Ascent” to the heavenly home is impressive indeed.

It has always been a strong point of Adi Holzer to deal earnestly and profoundly with topics in the form of cycles.

In recent years public commissions increased markedly, a sure sign for the popularity and appreciation of the artist.

The intensive engagement with glass mosaics and stained-glass windows for church interiors, which require considerable technical expertise and are these days only mastered by a few artists, have become artistic priorities.

And it is exactly here that Adi Holzer achieves a mastery of an “alternative reality” which is responsible for his unmistakable signature in all his work.

Weightlessness of existence and effortless of thought transport the viewers into a state which enables them to adumbrate an alternative and higher reality.

A profound message which elevates his work to a higher artistic proposition.

Music has always been a significant source of inspiration for the artist. This becomes evident in graphic serials and canvasses which are dedicated to composers such as Mahler, Mozart, Schubert and Bruckner.

As far as techniques are concerned, Adi Holzer is very versatile. The range of his artistic means of communication reaches from painting to several techniques of etching with more than 1,000 individual numbers, to screen printing, to lithography, to bronze, to tapestry and glass painting as well as glass mosaic and glass sculpture.

The encounter with Adi Holzer is an encounter with a fascinating, cosmopolitan artist, an encounter that stimulates reflection.

In 2016 Stockerau, Adi Holzer’s place of birth, honoured him with the bestowal of the “Golden Medal for Culture of the City of Stockerau”.

Prof. Siegfried Karrer

Salzburg