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Oswald Oberhuber :
Hand und Traube

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Poysdorf-Wetzelsdorf, 2005

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The sculpture erected at a vantage point on a main road near Wetzelsdorf, Hand and Grape, is dedicated to the rich traditional culture of wine in Lower Austria. Like a three-dimensional drawing, the corroded iron structure defies its own delicately suggested physical presence and challenges its own permanence.

From a vantage point on the B7 highway near Wetzelsdorf there is a wonderful view of the secret capital of the Weinviertel region, Poysdorf. Gentle hills and dreamy vineyards dominate the surrounding countryside.
The sculpture by Oberhuber, at Wetzelsdorfer Bellevue, is as restful and natural looking as the area. Hand and Grape is the title of the monument to the Lower Austrian wine culture, conceived by a cosmopolitan Tyrolean who has propagated "permanent change in art" like no other in the country and wiped out the development of any artistic style with a decisive grandiloquent gesture. If one so pleases, Hand and Grape can be put in that drawer of Oberhuber's marked 'Drawing in Space', or found in the box 'Sculpture as a Symbol for Everything Else', or conjured-up out of his 'Thought-Space-Time' hat. It is an excellent thing that there is an imposing large-scale piece by Oberhuber in Lower Austria. The project is to be credited to Romana Scheffknecht, also an artist and member of the Art in Public Space jury. She was able to convince the very busy 'Ossi', who alongside his main profession as an artist was furiously busy as an exhibition organiser, writer, teacher and art college big shot, of the necessity of making an exception and setting a sign of permanence. No obvious decision for somebody who once said: "Every solution is always wrong on completion, and immediately to be solved in another way."
(Brigitte Huck)

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Oswald Oberhuber, Hand und Traube, 2005
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