Harald Klingelhöller: 38 Teile in Form von 19 Zeichen für Tisch und 25 Buchstaben der Worte “Einmal im Leben”, 1981

Harald Klingelhöller (1954) uses letters, words and phrases as sculptural elements, employing a range of materials from paper to steel via cardboard and plaster. The titles of his works and the words he uses in his sculptures come from various contexts: press articles, verses from poems, vocabulary borrowed from medicine, and extracts from legal texts. Klingelhöller defines himself as “a flâneur in the language”, and the words with which he works are chosen for their “capacity to transfer the viewer into a different space”. His sculptures can be seen as the transposition in space of different characteristics of language, including the use of metaphor, intonation and pronunciation. An example of this process might be his use of repetition: “Repetition is necessary, as well as variation. There are no original words, so why would you focus on the concept of originality?” The two works in the Mudam Collection concern the deconstruction of language. The elements that make up 38 Teile in Form von 19 Zeichen für Tisch and 25 Buchstaben der Worte „Einmal im Leben” (38 pieces in the form of 19 table signs and 25 letters from the words ‘once in life’) (1981) recall the shapes of characters from the alphabet and can be rearranged for each presentation of the work.