Wolf Ornauer

Lives and works in Vienna, Austria

Artist statement

In their most recent collaboration, Michael Ornauer and Clemens Wolf demonstrate how the principle of artistic cooperation can unfold as productive friction. Their joint works bring together two autonomous painterly positions that are situated between gesture, material, and space — and thus open a field of tension reminiscent of historic artist duos like Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat, whose collaborative work gained new visual energy from the clash of two temperaments. Like Warhol and Basquiat, Ornauer and Wolf play with the concept of mutual intervention: one creates the painterly stage, the other intervenes within it. Ornauer applies dense, vibrant layers of color that thrive on movement and atmospheric depth; Wolf responds with physical placements—covering, wrapping, and penetrating the surface with materials such as parachutes dipped in epoxy resin or parachute fabric. The result is not a compromise but a visual exchange where both artists expand their language. These collaborations are more than a formal experiment. They reflect the essence of 21st-century painting—as an open system that operates between image, object, and action. The merging of two distinct styles evokes the collaborative practices of the 1980s, when artists began to relativize the ego of the individual in favor of a collective process. Even here, the outcome is not harmonious unity, but a conscious struggle for dominance and balance, for proximity and distance—a dynamic that constitutes the...

Artwork