The Art of Making the Invisible Visible.

My early works trace how an image comes into being: through line, surface, revision, and density. The body functions as a measure of space and time rather than a motif. Already here, my interest in transitions and in images that shape the conditions of seeing becomes clear.

Explore Works

Harald Grünauer - Body in color space, earlier work

Earlier Works

Time Body 2006

“Time Body” is a monumental work in painted Styrofoam, whose organic form and dynamic surface create a tangible presence. At 150 cm high, 170 cm wide and 100 cm in diameter, the sculpture turns the abstract concept of time into physical experience. Its irregular texture, built through layering and painting, holds stability and movement at once, as if the flow of time had been frozen in material form. Made in 2006, the work belongs to a key group of early pieces in which volume, surface and light served to make intangible ideas — time, memory, transformation — perceptible.

View Series

Body in Color Space 2000-2007

In this series the figures are not portraits. They carry tension, posture and gaze. A clear contour holds the body like a delicate framework, while translucent layers of colour dissolve it and build it up again. Space forms through overlap and abrasion — memory, stage and state pressed into a single surface. In the shift between closeness and distance the core of the series appears: the body as a sensitive measuring point in a vibrating field of colour.

View Series

Spatial Installations and Object Studies, 2002

“Spatial Installations and Object Studies” brings together early works from 2002 that pursue the interaction of space, material and perception. The objects — geometric constructions as well as plain everyday materials — are carefully placed in the room, holding a subtle tension between form, viewer and surroundings. The series marks an important step in the exploration of presence and spatial experience.

View Series

Figure Protocols 1998-2005

This series gathers nude studies as direct records of looking. The line seeks no polished contour; it registers weight, shift and tension, often in several overlapping attempts. In the openness of these traces, time itself stays legible — hesitation, correction, sudden clarity. The body serves as a measure of space and rhythm, with nothing added by way of narrative. The series gathers fifty drawings in pencil on paper, 58 × 41 cm, made between 1998 and 2005. For seven years the work pursued a single question; it is the most extensive series in the entire body of work. Pencil hides nothing. Every correction remains beside the line it corrects, every hesitation is recognisable as an interruption. The sheets therefore show not the result of looking but its course – hence the word protocol in the title. The body here is not a motif but a measure. Proportion, weight and rotation can be tested against it because any deviation shows at once. What was worked out on the figure across those seven years returns in the later abstract works: there without the figure, but with the same attention to tension and balance.

View Series

Reductions 1998–2003

“Reductions” is built on an intentional economy of marks. Ink, contrast and open space carry the form, while denser passages focus the gaze. An early, precise visual language takes shape here, in which a few signs create a strong presence.

View Series

Laboratory Rooms 2001–2003

In “Laboratory Rooms,” the image turns into an experimental set-up. Figures, devices and architectural fragments appear as signs rather than narrative — a system of thresholds, edges and passages. The colored-pencil line stays precise and light; space assembles itself from hints and keeps reorganising. Already here, a way of thinking in constructions emerges that treats bodies and surroundings as variables of the same question.

View Series

Body Fragments 1998–2003

“Body Fragments” approaches the nude through states rather than contour and anatomy: weight, balance, compression, dissolution. Colour carries the body like an atmospheric field in which forms overlap and fall apart again. The figure reads more as event than image, a brief concentration of presence against the white of the paper. This early body of work already shows the interest in transitions — in the moment when movement and perception themselves turn into image.

View Series

Ghost Rooms 1998–2003

In “Ghost Rooms,” figures appear as passages rather than solid bodies: lines overlap, drift, remain only partly graspable. Space reads like a light scaffold of architecture, animal forms and signs, where closeness and distance happen at the same time. Colored pencil becomes a kind of breath here — transparent, searching, precise in its hesitation. This world recalls more than it narrates, and presence always carries a trace of absence.

View Series

Interior View 1998–2002

In Interior View, space becomes a psychological stage: layers of colored pencil and watercolor settle like filters of memory. Figures, objects, and architectural fragments appear as quiet signs that suggest more than they explain. The works balance intimacy and construction, as if the image were thinking from the inside out.

View Series

Spatial Studies 1997–2002

These drawings construct space rather than depict it. The figure appears as a contour that establishes order and unsettles it in the same move. Lines, arcs and grids lie across the body like coordinates, making movement visible as spatial memory.

View Series

Sculptures 1997–1998

These early plaster works approach the human body as both fragment and weight. The surfaces remain intentionally unresolved: traces of modelling, abrasion, and smoothing coexist, keeping the making visible. Moving between figure and head study, the series holds a quiet tension between presence and absence—form as evidence, and as memory.

View Series

Faces and Voices 1997–1998

The series Faces and Voices shows an intense engagement with the human face as an expression of inner states. Each portrait holds individual emotions, character traits and fleeting moments of presence and mood. Colored pencil, graphite and ink produce varied densities and textures that give the figures a tangible, almost physical existence. Made between 1997 and 1998, these works document an early path toward a sensitive and at the same time direct handling of expression and gesture.

View Series

Archetypes and Allegories 1995–1996

“Archetypes and Allegories” brings together works in which human, animal and hybrid figures meet in vividly expressive compositions. The sheets carry a surreal, narrative quality, evoking archetypal characters from myths and stories while holding symbolic meaning. Vibrant colour and dynamic arrangement produce scenes that oscillate between reality, dream and allegory. The series stands for an early search for a visual language for the psychological, social and mythological structures that shape human life and coexistence.

View Series